Ram Kumar (Indian, 1924 - 2018), acrylic on paper painting depicting an abstract expressionist townscape, 2005. Signed and dated on the backside.

Note: Born in 1924 in Simla, Ram Kumar was among India's leading modernists. He studied Economics at St. Stephens College, New Delhi, in 1946. Following this, he went to Paris to study painting under Andre Lhote and Fernard Leger from 1949 to 1952. Ram Kumar, like many of his confreres among the first generation of post-colonial Indian artists including such figures as F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, Paritosh Sen, Jehangir Sabavala, Krishen Khanna, S.H. Raza and Akbar Padamsee combined an internationalist desire with the need to belong emphatically to their homeland. In its internationalist mood, this generation looked to the early 20th-century modernisms of Paris, London and Vienna for inspiration; its need to belong prompted an interest in the construction of a viable Indian aesthetic that bore a dynamic relationship to an Indian identity.

18 x 25 in., (45.7 x 63.5 cm.)