Important Notice

“The landscape has no boundaries.” - AKBAR PADAMSEE

Transcending the limitations of conventional geography, Akbar Padamsee's landscapes have always challenged his viewers' notions of time and space. Following nearly two decades of experiments with the genre, Padamsee began to paint his seminal series of Metascapes in the 1970s, coining the term 'metascape' to describe the archetypical nature of these environments. Pared down... “The landscape has no boundaries.” - AKBAR PADAMSEE

Transcending the limitations of conventional geography, Akbar Padamsee's landscapes have always challenged his viewers' notions of time and space. Following nearly two decades of experiments with the genre, Padamsee began to paint his seminal series of Metascapes in the 1970s, coining the term 'metascape' to describe the archetypical nature of these environments. Pared down to the most basic elements, these quiet and expansive landscapes were stripped of all geographic and chronologic specificity. "I'm not interested in location or landscape. My general theme is nature - mountains, trees, water, the elements, and obviously one is influenced by the environment, but I'm not interested in painting Rajasthan or the desert of whatever. When I paint a tree, a mountain, or a river, I am really interested in 'the river', 'the mountain', 'the tree'. The paintings are neither abstract nor representational." (Artist quoted in Eunice D'Souza, "Akbar Padamsee's Metascapes," The Economic Times, 30 November 1975)

According to the critic Yashodhara Dalmia, Padamsee's metascapes are among his most distinctive artistic contributions, illuminating his precision and control over colour and texture. She explains, "These were brilliantly choreographed planes of light and dark made in thick impasto which evoked mountains, fields, sky, water. The controlled cadence of colours breaks into a throbbing intensity as the artist in his most masterly works invokes infinite time and space." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "From Realism to Supra-Realism," Indian Contemporary Art Post Independence, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1997, p. 17)

In these uninhabited metascapes, the sun and moon often shine in the same sky, eternally illuminating land and sea. The lack of a fixed location in space nor any relation to the passage of time imbibes these works with a sense of timelessness. While referring to the metascapes, Padamsee mentions Kalidasa's play Abhijanashakuntalam, in which he narrates the cohabitation of the sun and moon. Commenting on the inception of this series in an interview with Homi Bhabha, he said, "In the introductory stanza...[Kalidasa] describes the sun and the moon as the two controllers of time...and water and a source of all seeds....I would never have thought of painting the sun and the moon together if it were not for this. I felt I could use the elements - water, earth, sky - without referring to any particular landscape - a metaphysical landscape." (Homi Bhabha, "Figure and Shadow: Conversations on the Illusive Art of Akbar Padamsee," Bhanumati Padamsee and Annapurna Garimella eds., Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, pp. 29-33)

Though the present lot initially seems stark and still, there is a sense of movement, albeit glacial, generated in each meeting of the fields of contrasting colour that the artist has employed, and in each textural impression of the palette knife with which he has meticulously applied them. Speaking of the dynamic interaction between the planes of colour, such as that of the dark brown mountainous expanses and that of the blue water body in the present lot, Padamsee explains that, "...colours expand and contract, colours travel on the surface of the static painting...colour trajectory is strategy...A colourist needs to master the art of silencing some colours, so as to render others eloquent." (Artist quoted in David Elliot and Ebrahim Alkazi, India, Myth and Reality: Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1982, p. 17)

The present lot, among Padamsee's early metascapes, illustrates the importance attributed by the artist to colour, texture, and orchestration in this series of works. In its composition, one can find the underlying structure and careful construction which defines Padamsee's methodical way of observing the landscape. Seeming at once real and surreal, it reveals how Padamsee's metascapes "... include both a truly detached and analytical approach and a fascination for tautological rules. In the paintings the image prods the exercise, form being distilled to reveal the core. Curiously the endeavour is as old as it is modern: the artistic pursuit of a philosophical intent." (Mala Marwah, Lalit Kala Contemporary 23, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1977, p. 36)

Metascapes continued to be a distinct part of Padamsee's meticulously structured vocabulary throughout his career, well into the 2000s. In catapulting the viewer into a place where geographies and chronologies fade away, the artist underscores the universality of experience in these landscapes. It is this universal aspect that Padamsee hopes will provoke emotion in the viewer - "a special feeling or mood" - by creating space for the contemplation of what the artist terms the "psychological dimension' of his work." (Eunice de Souza, Akbar Padamsee Retrospective Exhibition, New Delhi: Art Heritage, 1980, p. 4)

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