Ram Kumar was affected by the plight of the unemployed and the urban poor that he found in Paris and London, while studying there in the 1950s. Having aligned with the left intelligentsia, Kumar found himself compelled to paint their suffering. His Modigliani-esque figures were not lacking in charm or dignity—the two sisters in this work wear their suffering with stoicism in a city evident through its busy mesh in the background. His lithographs from this period are now rare to find, since Kumar returned to India to soon discard the figurative in favour of the abstract.
published references
Appasamy, Jaya, ed., Ram Kumar: Lalit Kala Series on Contemporary Indian Art (New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1968), unpaginated Bharadwaj, Atul, Lal, Shyam, Ram Kumar: Lalit Kala Series on Contemporary Indian Art (New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1988) Singh, Kishore, ed., India’s French Connection: Indian Artists in France (New Delhi: DAG, 2018), p. 134
Ram Kumar
Untitled (Two Sisters)
1958
Lithograph on paper
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Ram Kumar
Untitled (Two Sisters)
1958
Lithograph on paper
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