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Lot 50

 

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In the 1970s, Akbar Padamsee began to paint a series of quiet and expansive landscapes dubbed metascapes, a word that described archetypical environments that had no fixed location in space and no relation to the passage of time. In these uninhabited metascapes, of which the present lot is one, the sun and moon often shine in the same sky, eternally illuminating land and sea. Shadowy mountains loom over fire-red plains, and deep blue bodies of... In the 1970s, Akbar Padamsee began to paint a series of quiet and expansive landscapes dubbed metascapes, a word that described archetypical environments that had no fixed location in space and no relation to the passage of time. In these uninhabited metascapes, of which the present lot is one, the sun and moon often shine in the same sky, eternally illuminating land and sea. Shadowy mountains loom over fire-red plains, and deep blue bodies of water reflect the glittering light from the wedges of paint representing celestial bodies.

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" ("From Realism to Supra-Realism", Indian Contemporary Art Post Independence, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1997, p. 17).

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 in these metascapes, 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" (as quoted in India Myth and Reality: Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1982, p. 17).

These works, endless and eternal, "…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 ore. Curiously the endeavour is as old as it is modern: the artistic pursuit of a philosophical intent " (Mala Marwah, Lalit Kala Contemporary 23, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1979, p. 36).

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