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Lot 36

 

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"The landscape has no boundaries." - AKBAR PADAMSEE

It was in the 1970s that Akbar Padamsee began to paint his Metascape series, coining the term 'metascape' to describe landscapes 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 in... "The landscape has no boundaries." - AKBAR PADAMSEE

It was in the 1970s that Akbar Padamsee began to paint his Metascape series, coining the term 'metascape' to describe landscapes 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 in brown and ochre 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 and illuminate his precision and control over colour and texture. "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)

While the present lot appears to be stark and still at first, a closer look makes the viewer realise an underlying sense of movement that emerges in every meeting of the fields of contrasting colour employed by the artist, 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." (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)

Padamsee thus creates, through his favourite juxtapositions of cadmium and orange that are complemented by browns and blues, a landscape that is both real and surreal. His 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, 1979, p. 36)

The present lot, therefore, is the reimagined landscape that results from Padamsee's liberated formalism. Devoid of figuration and any explicit spatial or temporal location, these grand, almost mythical paintings straddle the frontier between representation and abstraction and are simultaneously archetypal and timeless.

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