Untitled (Mother & Child)

Ram Kumar, one of modern Indian art’s stalwart abstractionists, began his career in the 1940s and ’50s with expressive figurative works, especially during, and following, his sojourn in Europe with his engagement with leftist intellectuals, setting the background of his work in the city or in the factory. These narratives of anguish would recur in his abstract landscapes as well. In this Untitled lithograph—a genre and medium he would eventually abandon—Kumar captures the dejection on the faces of the urban poor he encountered in Paris. In the background is a bustling city that has nothing to offer these individuals.