Important Notice

Lot 40

Akbar Padamsee returned to Bombay from his sojourn in Paris in the late 1950s, and travelled to New York in 1963 and 1964 on a John D Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. "Throughout the 1950s and early '60s, Padamsee travelled between the cosmopolitan centres of Paris and Bombay... Absorbing diverse visual terrains across India and Europe, and, beginning in 1963, of North America too, Padamsee began to explore landscape painting as a genre in the... Akbar Padamsee returned to Bombay from his sojourn in Paris in the late 1950s, and travelled to New York in 1963 and 1964 on a John D Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. "Throughout the 1950s and early '60s, Padamsee travelled between the cosmopolitan centres of Paris and Bombay... Absorbing diverse visual terrains across India and Europe, and, beginning in 1963, of North America too, Padamsee began to explore landscape painting as a genre in the late 1950s. In spite of (or perhaps because of) spending the 1960s transiting among urban hubs in three continents, imaginative natural landscapes became one of Padamsee's central artistic projects during that decade." (Beth Citron, "Akbar Padamsee's Artistic 'Landscape' of the '60s," Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 195)

Padamsee's landscapes from the early '60s are reminiscent of the French countryside, but transcend a specific location. Depicting closely-packed houses set against a vibrant blue sky, the present lot underscores the artist's interest in structure, with a colour palette that foreshadows his later work. According to literary critic and journalist Sham Lal, "His method is quite contrary to that of the expressionists who use colour directly to express the turbulence or violence of their emotions without subjecting it to any discipline. In Padamsee's work colour is always subordinate to a structural basis. The texture of the paintings done in this period is by no means a superfluous detail; it is part of the meaning of the picture." ("Akbar Padamsee," Padamsee: Sadanga Series on Modern and Contemporary Indian Art, Mumbai: Vakils Publications, p. 8)

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