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Lot 50

 

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“It seems to me that it is not possible to ever exhaust all possibilities of imaging the human head, each similar and yet so dissimilar. My ardent search is for a look, a gaze, an expression, a stance and a placement.” - AKBAR PADAMSEE

Akbar Padamsee explored figuration throughout his artistic career of over six decades. In his portraits, he paints faces that are rarely identifiable, but are nonetheless charged with emotion. “I... “It seems to me that it is not possible to ever exhaust all possibilities of imaging the human head, each similar and yet so dissimilar. My ardent search is for a look, a gaze, an expression, a stance and a placement.” - AKBAR PADAMSEE

Akbar Padamsee explored figuration throughout his artistic career of over six decades. In his portraits, he paints faces that are rarely identifiable, but are nonetheless charged with emotion. “I draw my figures and forms from the world that I know intimately, but viewers also find there is a sense of detachment or alienation in them. My figures are not heroic creatures, nor are they angst-ridden, shattered beings. They exist, and on their flesh and bones is stamped the experience of living.” (Artist quoted in an interview with Paromita Chakrabarti, The Indian Express, 20 September 2015, online)

Portrayed against an indistinct background, these figures are often solitary, as evident in the present lot. “Lone figures have allowed him the possibility for exploring the formal and existential meaning of space and the location of the human in it. Singular males or females appear to work on the canvas like architecture does to populate and perhaps acculturate a terrain. That is why his portraits... endow a monumentality and ponderousness to the figures.” (Bhanumati Padamsee and Annapurna Garimella eds., “Re-situating Akbar Padamsee: a sociology of figuration,” Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 90)

The present lot was painted in 1962 - a time when Padamsee produced a series of female nudes in luminescent, almost harsh colours with vibrant brushstrokes evoking an overall sense of alienation and detachment. “These nudes are simultaneously erotic and virtually inaccessible.” (Padamsee and Garimella eds., p. 138) These qualities of detachment and isolation are evident in the present lot, where a singular nude female figure is depicted with shut eyes, her head tilted downward. She is rendered in luminescent shades of orange in sharp contrast to a greyish background.

Literary critic and journalist Sham Lal wrote of this period, “It is always the composition of planes and colours which give form to what Padamsee has to say. This becomes all the more clear in his paintings of 1961 and 1962. It is not only the richer design of these paintings but their more mellow use of colour which distinguishes them from Padamsee’s earlier work.” (Sham Lal, “Akbar Padamsee,” Padamsee: Sadanga Series on Modern and Contemporary Indian Art, Mumbai: Vakils & Sons Pvt. Ltd., 1964, p. 8)

For Padamsee, portraiture was a means to uncover the innermost thoughts, emotions and complexities of his subjects with reverence, and to reveal the universality of human emotions beneath the surface. “Padamsee has almost always treated portraiture as a pretext, approaching it only to leave it behind. His aim is to allude to the human face in the border zone between likeness and presence Thus, the face marks the site of many encounters and identifications for Padamsee... In gazing at these apparently remote figures, we confront our own predicaments, are returned to the loom of time.” (“The Ricochet of the Line,” Akbar Padamsee: Drawings, Watercolours, Photographs, Mumbai: Pundole Art Gallery, 2004, pp. 4-5)

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