Lot 38

 

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Akbar Padamsee’s engagement with figuration persisted for nearly six decades, centring on recurring subjects such as the female figure, the prophetic male figure, and the couple. As Anupa Mehta observes, the various iterations of these forms “gain momentum like a mantra. What may appear repetitive or obsessive is actually a re-visitation that further pares his imagery till he is able to extract the bare essence of an idea/ideal.” (Anupa Mehta,... Akbar Padamsee’s engagement with figuration persisted for nearly six decades, centring on recurring subjects such as the female figure, the prophetic male figure, and the couple. As Anupa Mehta observes, the various iterations of these forms “gain momentum like a mantra. What may appear repetitive or obsessive is actually a re-visitation that further pares his imagery till he is able to extract the bare essence of an idea/ideal.” (Anupa Mehta, “The Inherent Lightness of Being: Akbar Padamsee’s Oeuvre of the ‘50s”, Bhanumati Padamsee and Annapurna Garimella eds., Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 140)

Although Padamsee largely abandoned the couple as a subject following the controversy surrounding his first exhibition of such works in Bombay in the 1950s, he returned to it in 1987. By then, the rigid outlines that had bound his figures dissolved to give way to more fluid contours, producing ephemeral forms that emerge from textured planes of colour. As critic and curator Marta Jakimowicz notes, “Padamsee’s images are never portraits of identifiable people. ... they resemble a residual vision after an encounter. An aura left by a presence transposed in the memory. The background becomes a part of the human situation, imprinting its character and compulsions on people, and in turn being influenced by them-the process both violent and soothing.” (Marta Jakimowicz, “Tracing Shadows of the Sublime”, Akbar Padamsee Works on Paper - Critical Boundaries, Mumbai: Pundole Art Gallery, 2004, p. 9)

Like his solitary figures, Padamsee’s couples often appear pensive and melancholic, evoking not just personal anguish but the broader condition of human existence. As writer Shamlal notes, “In his later work, the men and women’s despair at last finds a tongue and…(they) ask not for pity, not even for compassion, but for understanding. Padamsee hates sentiment... He is embarrassed by melodrama… The faces are not contorted by suffering, they become suffering. The result is a reserve and a calm which unnerves us.” (Shamlal, quoted in “Biography”, Padamsee and Garimella eds., p. 348)

Padamsee frequently depicted these couples nude and rendered them in a “red, burnished, almost golden colour scheme…that brings the bodies alive.” (Pheroza Godrej, “A Time for Reflection: Pose? Posture? Picture? Painting?” Padamsee and Garimella eds., p. 155) In later works like the present lot, he adopted a colour palette dominated by sepia, yellow, umber, and sienna after he was gifted a set of sepia oil-bars from London. Reflecting on how this transition altered both his forms and his technique, the artist explained, “While working with them I discover a distinct change in the emerging forms. I find myself largely using the arm stroke, less of the finger, wrist, and forearm stroke. Soon the oil-bar is replaced by a cloth rag, brush, and oil paint-but the working method remains the same.” (Artist quoted in “The Tertiaries”, Padamsee and Garimella eds., p. 341)

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