Important Notice

In the 1960s, Akbar Padamsee painted a series of nudes, such as the present lot. He painted these solitary, figures in luminescent, almost harsh, colours, with vibrant brushstrokes - evoke an overall sense of alienation and detachment. "The sharp, swift strokes of the impasto display a certain aggression... These nudes are simultaneously erotic and virtually inaccessible. The softened outline and the glowing colour palette pose a radical... In the 1960s, Akbar Padamsee painted a series of nudes, such as the present lot. He painted these solitary, figures in luminescent, almost harsh, colours, with vibrant brushstrokes - evoke an overall sense of alienation and detachment. "The sharp, swift strokes of the impasto display a certain aggression... These nudes are simultaneously erotic and virtually inaccessible. The softened outline and the glowing colour palette pose a radical departure from the earlier cultish images, confi rming the painter's observation that "Different forms are born of diff erent orders, different proportions and different libidos. Forms do not renew themselves but the specific which ordains them assumes new mathematical relationships..."" (Bhanumati Padamsee and Annapurna Garimella eds., Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, pp. 138, 140)

In keeping with this thought, Padamsee experimented-through technique, form and vision-with the female figure for over six decades, varying the theme each time. "...these iterations and reiterations 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. As he says, "That which attracts us existed already, was a part of our memory and like a phantom springs into the fi eld of the eye - a sphinx of pleasure."" (Padamsee and Garimella, p. 140) The present lot was painted in 1965, the same year in which Padamsee was awarded the J D Rockefeller III fellowship to travel to New York.

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