Akbar Padamsee

Acquired directly from the artist by Harry Hyatt Lunn, Jr., Paris, circa early 1960s

Acquired from the above by Louis Sleeper, Washington, D.C., 1965

Thence by descent

Harry Hyatt Lunn, Jr. was born in 1933 in Detroit and recruited by the CIA following his college graduation. He traveled throughout Southeast Asia in the mid-1950s and from 1956 to 1958, Lunn served in the army before joining the United States Department of Defense as an analyst where he was involved in anti-communist research. In 1961, Lunn was posted at the US Embassy in Paris and began collecting work by emerging artists in the city, including Akbar Padamsee.

After his Paris posting, Lunn worked in Washington D.C. on President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress and the Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs, a front organization for the CIA to fund student organizations. In 1965 he met Louis Sleeper, a colleague at the Alliance for Progress stationed in Chile and sold the present lot to him. Sleeper cherished these works throughout his life, bringing them to his homes throughout his time in the US Foreign Service in Chile and Washington, D.C., and upon retirement in Albuquerque.

“It’s far more exciting for me as a painter, to work in grey or sepia. The brush can move freely from figure to ground, and this interaction offers me immense formal possibilities.” (Akbar Padamsee quoted in H. Bhabha, 'Figure and Shadow' in B. Padamsee and A. Garimella (eds.), Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 52)

Following a decade spent mostly in Paris, where intense study helped him develop his artistic style, Akbar Padamsee returned to Mumbai in 1959 and began creating works for a solo show at Gallery 59. Padamsee reinvented his practice for this exhibition, painting outside and restricting himself to only grey pigments. The resulting show, which was dominated by large grisaille landscapes, was a sensation, and works from Padamsee’s brief grey period are viewed as some of his finest.

“A light grey and a dark grey can be used as opposite poles. A scale is established between them, with a centre stretching towards the extremities… This way grey becomes colour where tension is stretched across in the same way as across red and green or orange and blue or yellow and violet.” (A. Shamlal quoted in S. Doshi, 'Shades of Grey' in B. Padamsee and A. Garimella (eds.), Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 182)

The present lot dates to 1963, two years after the formal conclusion of the grey period, but these two paintings employ the same limited color palette. Smaller than the works produced for the Gallery 59 show, Untitled (Woman) and Untitled (Man) are more intimate explorations of the possibilities of grey. The narrow range of hues allows one to focus on Padamsee’s energetic brushwork, which is juxtaposed with the peaceful expression on the faces of both figures, who are depicted with their eyes shut and their heads slightly bowed.

“With Padamsee the renunciation of colour becomes an act of self discovery. By restricting himself to greys… he strikes the richest vein of poetry in his art.” (A. Shamlal quoted in S. Doshi, 'Shades of Grey' in B. Padamsee and A. Garimella (eds.), Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 182)