Akbar Padamsee (b.1928)

Acquired from Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai

Private Collection, Mumbai

Saffronart, 28-30 March 2012, lot 11

There is wear and rubbing to the work, particularly around the edges and fine craquelure present, particularly in the thicker areas of paint. The canvas has been repaired in several areas, particularly in the lower half section, visible from the reverse. UV Light: Consolidation is visible throughout, particularly in the upper right corner, lower left, and lower left centre.
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Arguably, Akbar Padamsee's most distinctive works are his ‘Metascapes’. These were a result of series of experiments juxtaposing colours and exploring textures.  While the compositions contained the material elements of a landscape, they evoked a vast, endless infinity.  ‘Dual pulls of matter and spirit are always latent in his work... He sees his paintings as a bed of tensions created by 'the linear, the formal, the tonal, and the chromatic' on which the form describes itself or 'remains in a fluid potential state.’ (Ella Datta, "Akbar Padamsee," Art Heritage 8, New Delhi, 1988-1989, p. 40)

Akbar Padamsee began painting his Metascapes in 1970 and this current work is from that early seminal period. As the word Metascape suggests, Padamsee’s concern was centred on the mythic or archetypal landscape which is expressed visually by a stringent ordering of symbolically potent elements, such as the earth, the sun, and the moon, in a temporal space.  The use of a bold palette mixed with earthy tones complements his choice of landscape as subject, the colours evoking a sense of movement in an unmoving space. These sublime compositions consist of, ' ... brilliantly choreographed planes of light and dark made in thick impasto which evoke mountains, field, sky and water. The controlled cadence of the colors breaks into a throbbing intensity as the artist in his most masterly works, evokes infinite time and space.' (Y. Dalmia, Indian Contemporary Art Post Independence, New Delhi, 1997, p. 17)

Padamsee has said, "The idea of using the (sun and) the moon in my metascapes originated when I was reading the introductory stanzas to the Abhijnana Sakuntalam, where Kalidasa speaks of the eight visible forms of Lord Siva without mentioning them by name. For instance, he suggests the sun and the moon as the controllers of time. It is by this process that the artist deals with reality; not by describing or naming, but by a superimposition of secondary and tertiary semantic planes upon the pictorial sign. A new form arises which belongs to the mind of the artist, not to nature. It exists on the mental plane as a distinct entity, to be recreated by the sensitive spectator." (A. Padamsee, India Myth and Reality, Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Oxford, 1982, p. 17)

Known for his archetypal landscapes, Padamsee depicts a world that is both real and transcendent, his forms often hovering on the boundary between abstraction and representation. Finding inspiration in the competing elements of earth, water, air and fire, Padamsee's works connote no specific time or place and instead become mythical examples of the natural world. Padamsee states, "...colours expand and contract, colours travel on the surface of the static painting... colour trajectory is strategy... A colourist needs to master the art of silencing some colours, so as to render others eloquent." (ibid.)