Akbar Padamsee

Born in 1928, Akbar Padamsee studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art in Mumbai, during which time he became a member of the Progressive Artists’ Group alongside painters such as Maqbool Fida Husain, Sayed Haider Raza and Francis Newton Souza. After graduating, Padamsee moved to Paris, where he worked with surrealist painter Stanley Hayter; it was during this time that he became increasingly familiar with the works of artists such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Georges Rouault, all of whom deeply influenced his practice.

In 1952, he received an award from French critic André Breton for his painting Woman with Bird and in 1953, he had his first ever solo exhibition at the Galerie Saint Placide. In 1954, Padamsee had his first solo show in Mumbai at Jehangir Art Gallery, where he was forced to successfully defend himself against obscenity charges over his paintings Lovers No. 1 and Lovers No. 2.

Over the course of his career, Padamsee often returned to the same themes, including studies of the human head and abstract landscapes that Padamsee described as metascapes, which were highly influenced by Classical Indian literature. “I would never have thought of painting the sun and the moon together if it were not for [Kalidasa’s Shakuntala]. I felt I could use the elements – water, earth, sky – without referring to any particular landscape – a metaphysical landscape.” the artist noted." (Akbar Padamsee quoted in Padamsee: Work in Language, edited by B. Padamsee and A. Garimella, Mumbai, 2010, p. 29)

In 1959, Padamsee started to eliminate color from his work and began thinking through different shades of grey. This paved the way for his ‘Grey Series,’ which explored the possibilities of this limited palette and includes some of his most admired work. When asked about his motivation for pursuing this series, Padamsee explained that “a light gray and a dark gray can be used as opposite poles. A scale is established between them with a centre stretching toward the extremities...gray is without prejudice. It does not discriminate between object and space.” (Akbar Padamsee quoted in Padamsee, edited by Mulk Raj Anand, Mumbai, 1964, p. 40)

Padamsee received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Lalit Kala Akademi National Award (1962), the Kalidas Samman (1997), the Lalit Kala Ratna Puraskar (2004), the Roopdhar Award (2008) and the Kailash Lalit Kala as well as the Padma Bushan (2010). He passed away in Coimbatore in 2020.