Important Notice

Like his figurative works, Akbar Padamsee's landscapes are quiet, yet powerful; restrained, yet evocative. Influenced by his close study of Sanskrit grammar and Chinese painting among other subjects, these works eschew rigidity and structure in favour of fluid sensuality and inspired counterpoints between earth, water and sky.

Painstakingly constructing each impasto facet of the rugged expanses of sky and land of the present lot with a... Like his figurative works, Akbar Padamsee's landscapes are quiet, yet powerful; restrained, yet evocative. Influenced by his close study of Sanskrit grammar and Chinese painting among other subjects, these works eschew rigidity and structure in favour of fluid sensuality and inspired counterpoints between earth, water and sky.

Painstakingly constructing each impasto facet of the rugged expanses of sky and land of the present lot with a palette knife, Padamsee employs texture and subtle tonal variations to evoke a sense of movement, as well as one of endlessness. Devoid of figuration and any explicit spatial or temporal location, these grand, almost mythical paintings straddle the frontier between representation and abstraction, at once archetypal and timeless.

Perceiving and portraying nature as a construct of the most rudimentary elements of life, the artist describes these primal works as metascapes rather than landscapes, hinting, perhaps, at a greater purpose. "The lakes, rivers, and mountains in his paintings are actually depictions of Water, Earth, and Air. The Sun and the Moon are the great Fires…Padamsee is a materialist, when you define matter as the few irreducible things our life is made of" (Gieve Patel, "To Pick Up a Brush", Contemporary Indian Art from the Chester and Davida Herwitz Family Collection, Grey Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, New York, 1985, p. 10). The artist's metascapes "include both a truly detached and analytical approach and a fascination for tautological rules. In these paintings the images prods the exercise, form being distilled to reveal the ore. Curiously the endeavour is as old as it is modern: the artistic pursuit of a philosophical intent" (Mala Marwah, Lalit Kala Contemporary 23, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1979, p. 36).

In catapulting the viewer into a place where geographies and chronologies fade away, the artist underscores the universality of experience. It is this universal aspect of these landscapes that Padamsee hopes will provoke emotion in the viewer – ‘a special feeling or mood' – by creating space for the contemplation of what the artist terms the ‘psychological dimension' of his work (Eunice de Souza, Akbar Padamsee Retrospective Exhibition, Art Heritage, New Delhi, 1980, p. 4).

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