Important Notice

Lot 72

Padamsee's work until the late 1950's was largely figurative and focused on the the individual – they seem to reflect portraits of conflict within his characters' personalities. As a result, this shift to architectural representations which seem to divest themselves of the human perspective, seem to be a distinct shift in the artist's oeuvre:'At first sight the landscapes and metascapes would appear to have little in common with the rest of... Padamsee's work until the late 1950's was largely figurative and focused on the the individual – they seem to reflect portraits of conflict within his characters' personalities. As a result, this shift to architectural representations which seem to divest themselves of the human perspective, seem to be a distinct shift in the artist's oeuvre:'At first sight the landscapes and metascapes would appear to have little in common with the rest of Padamsee's work…According to Padamsee, what links them, is the method of working…But there is too, in the aggression and receding of various planes and colours, and the ambiguity of response, the disturbing fusion of the familiar and the inaccessible, so that the boundaries of each are the constantly blurred and reformed. The final effect, as with the male studies and the nudes is to suggest that nothing familiar or unfamiliar can be taken for granted.' (Eunice de Souza, Akbar Padamsee, exhibition catalogue, Art Heritage, 1978, p.9,10)
In this world of panoramas and views of ordered rooftops , Padamsee re-engages color as his 'grey period' receeds and 'The subject matter is chosen to give you the possibility of using colour…but it shouldn't be a normal landscape, Says Padamsee. There must be something uncanny there. Unless some disquieting feeling is there, I would reject it. This preoccupation with "disquieting feeling" links various phases of Padamsee's landscape painting, though at first sight they appear to vary greatly in the formal means used…The heavy emphasis on geometric forms in the panoramice studies…seems to suggest a preoccupation with order, not with the disquieting. The new and dazzling pattersn seem to impose this order on the familiar, casual landscape of houses and rooftops, but simultaneously they push the familiar away by giving it the dimension of an epiphany.' (Ibid, p. 10,12)

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