Ram Kumar

Ram Kumar (23 September 1924 – 14 April 2018) was an Indian artist and writer who has been described as one of India's foremost abstract painters. He was associated with the Progressive artists' group along with greats like M.F. Hussain, Tyeb Mehta, S.H. Raza. He is said to be one of the first Indian artists to give up figurativism for abstract art. His art commands high prices in the domestic and international market. His work "The Vagabond" fetched $1.1 million at Christie's, setting another world record for the artist. He is also one of the few Indian Modernist masters accomplished in writing as well as painting.

Ram Kumar Verma was born in Shimla, the capital of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh in a large middle-class family of eight brothers and sisters. His father was a government employee from Patiala in Punjab, India who worked in the Civil and Administrative Division in the British Government. While pursuing M.A. in Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, he chanced upon an art exhibition in 1945. One evening, after "loitering" around Connaught Place with his friends from St Stephen's College, he landed up at an art exhibition.

Ram Kumar painted abstract landscapes, usually in oil or acrylic. He was also associated with the Progressive artists' group.Ram Kumar has participated in various exhibitions in and out of India, including the 1958 Venice Biennale and the Festival of India shows in the then USSR and Japan in 1987 and 1988. One of Ram Kumar's latest solo exhibitions was in 2008 in Delhi. Ram Kumar also wrote in Hindi and eight collections of his works have been published, as well as two novels and a travelogue.The human condition is the main concern of the painter manifested in his early works by the alienated individual within the city.Later the city, specifically Varanasi with its dilapidated, crammed houses, conveys a sense of hopelessness. Increasingly abstract works done in sweeping strokes of paint evoke both exultation of natural spaces and more recently an incipient violence within human habitation.As the interest in Indian art has grown, paintings by Ram Kumar are getting increasing recognition in the art market.Ram Kumar received the Padma Shri in 1972 and the Padma Bhushan.

He lived and worked in Delhi until his death in 2018.