Akbar Padamsee

in good overall condition, minor surface dirt and traces of mold in orange and red areas, minor paint shrinkage in brown areas, would benefit from a light clean
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For Akbar Padamsee, painting is a direct result of tensions created by "the linear, the formal, the tonal and the chromatic." His images alternate between the human figure and the landscape, and between primary and tertiary colors - anchors that allow him to pursue an aesthetic variety to a successful conclusion.' (Amrita Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai, 2005, p. 60).

After graduating from the J.J. School of Art in 1951, Padamsee left for Paris and became enamored by French Modernism. Works from this period especially in his use of line bear the stylistic influence of Rouault where form dominates color, but it is in the 1960's that the change to color over form is most noticeable. "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's Metascapes, begun in 1970, represent his long involvement with the landscape and were a result of a series of experiments juxtaposing colors with texture. As the word Metascape suggests, Padamsee is concerned with 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.  While the compositions contained the material elements of a landscape, they evoked a vast, endless infinity. The use of a bold palette mixed with earthy tones complements his choice of landscape as subject, the colors 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.' (Yashodhara Dalmia, Indian Contemporary Art Post Independence, New Delhi, 1997, p. 17).

"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." (Akbar 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, "...colors expand and contract, colors travel on the surface of the static painting... color trajectory is strategy... A colourist needs to master the art of silencing some colours, so as to render others eloquent." (ibid.)