Important Notice

In 1963 and 1964 Padamsee travelled to New York and across North America with support from a John D. Rockefeller 3rd Foundation Fellowship. "Padamsee's works from these two years attest to his first breakings from the use of landscape for formalist study or the rehearsal of the Western (especially French) classical tradition." (Beth Citron, "Akbar Padamsee's Artistic "Landscape" of the '60s", Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Marg... In 1963 and 1964 Padamsee travelled to New York and across North America with support from a John D. Rockefeller 3rd Foundation Fellowship. "Padamsee's works from these two years attest to his first breakings from the use of landscape for formalist study or the rehearsal of the Western (especially French) classical tradition." (Beth Citron, "Akbar Padamsee's Artistic "Landscape" of the '60s", Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2010, pp. 203,206)

Delta, painted in 1963, is an unusual painting that does not fit in with either the structured landscapes that Padamsee painted in the early 1960s, or with the brighter metascapes from his later years. It contains the monochromes of his earlier Grey Works but hints at the fuller colour palette that would follow in his later, brighter landscapes. The present lot retains a textural richness in which colours are layered and worked through to suggest a ghost-like fluidity of form. He seems to have deconstructed his earlier landscapes towards abstraction as a new departure. It is an extremely important work that marks a transition in the artist's constant experimentation with style and was featured on the cover of the 1964 Sadanga series Padamsee monograph by Vakils.

Krishna Riboud (1927 - 2000)

This work of Padamsee comes from the collection of Krishna Riboud. Born in Dhaka to Rajendra Roy and Ena Tagore, a niece of Rabindranath Tagore, she won a scholarship to attend Wellesley College in the US in 1945. Introduced by famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson to Jean Riboud, she married him in Connecticut in 1949.
.brKrishna Riboud was an historian, collector of Indian and Chinese textiles, patron of the arts and powerful political hostess. The Ribouds were members of Europe's elite political and social circles and friends to political leaders, including President Francois Mitterrand, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and General Ne Win of Burma. As a collector, Krishna amassed immense knowledge about the art of America, Europe and Asia, which she collected through years of study at the Musee Guimet in Paris, and in the museums of London, New Delhi, St. Petersburg and Japan.

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