ArtsBespoke
Photograph of Akbar Padamsee

The Artists of the House · 02

Akbar Padamsee

1928 to 2020 · Mumbai

Known for the Grey Series, the Metascapes and the Mirror Images, and for work across painting, sculpture, photography and film.

Photograph: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

MetascapesMirror imagesGrey periodNudesAbstractionMetascapesMirror imagesGrey periodNudesAbstractionMetascapesMirror imagesGrey periodNudesAbstractionMetascapesMirror imagesGrey periodNudesAbstraction
Born
1928
Died
2020
Birthplace
Mumbai
Medium
Oil on canvas, Watercolour, Charcoal, Lithography, Photography, Film, Computer graphics

Akbar Padamsee was born in Mumbai in 1928 and studied at the Sir J.J. School of Art. He was associated with the Progressive Artists' Group and is counted among the pioneers of modern Indian painting. He moved to France in 1951 and received a prize from Andre Breton in 1952. His first solo exhibition in Mumbai was held at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 1954.

He is known for his Metascapes, abstract non figurative landscapes, and for his Mirror Images of heads and figures, and he also worked in sculpture, printmaking, photography and film. He showed at the Venice Biennale in 1953 and 1955 and received the Lalit Kala Akademi gold medal in 1962. In 1969 he used a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship to found the VIEW workshop. He received the Padma Bhushan in 2010 and died in 2020.

A life, dated

AB / TIMELINE

  1. 1928

    Born on 12 April in Bombay, now Mumbai.

  2. 1951

    Left for Paris after finishing his diploma at the Sir J. J. School of Art.

  3. 1954

    Held his first solo show in India at the Jehangir Art Gallery; the Lovers paintings brought obscenity charges and he was acquitted.

  4. 1962

    Received the Lalit Kala Akademi national award.

  5. 1972

    Showed the Metascapes series, abstract works formed from a search for formal logic.

  6. 1994

    Exhibited the Mirror Images series.

  7. 2010

    Awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India.

  8. 2020

    Died on 6 January in Coimbatore, aged 91.

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Works from the house

AB / WORKS

Sanjeev Sonpimpare, Embrace beneath the banyan: a square painting of two blue figures in an embrace in front of a banyan with hanging roots, high-rise towers and low rooftops.

Figures & portraits

Embrace beneath the banyan

Sanjeev Sonpimpare. Two figures, one in deep ultramarine and one in pale cornflower, hold each other in the foreground, their forms cut from flat colour with scratches of red showing through.

A square painting: a large vermilion half face in profile with a green eye, ringed by seated green and yellow deities, with a winged cow leaping over a brown and green chequerboard.

Devotional & narrative

Vermilion face with Kamadhenu

Ramesh Gorjala. A large vermilion half face in profile, with a single green eye, anchors this square canvas.

A square Kalamkari style painting: a saffron yellow face in profile with a gold nose ring, a crimson lotus panel at the right, and Maa Lakshmi Ji seated on a lotus inside the contour within a patterned sari border.

Devotional & narrative

Lakshmi on the lotus, saffron profile

Ramesh Gorjala. A saffron face in profile, a gold ring at the nostril, sets the key of the canvas.

Chandra Morkonda, The golden tree and the white bull: a tall painting of a great tree with blue-and-gold leaves rising from a golden trunk and tangled roots, with a white lotus bank at the left, a white bull at the right and a crescent moon on a vermilion ground.

Landscape, nature & trees

The golden tree and the white bull

Chandra Morkonda. A great tree stands against a vermilion ground, its leaves shaped in blue and veined in gold, each a small tree in itself, set over a field of ringed and patterned colour.

All works Abstract Figures Devotional Landscape Ravi Varma Press stones