Important Notice

Akbar Padamsee has repeatedly painted the figure throughout his artistic career, despite several evolutions in style and technique. For almost six decades, he painted “the female figure, the prophetic male figure, the couple, and the visionary landscape - 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... Akbar Padamsee has repeatedly painted the figure throughout his artistic career, despite several evolutions in style and technique. For almost six decades, he painted “the female figure, the prophetic male figure, the couple, and the visionary landscape - 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.” (Bhanumati Padamsee and Annapurna Garimella eds., “The inherent lightness of being: Akbar Padamsee’s oeuvre of the ‘50s,” Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, Mumbai: Marg Publications and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 140)

The couple is a recurring subject in Padamsee’s body of figures - a subject he continued to explore throughout his life despite the controversy surrounding his first exhibition of these works in Bombay in the 1950s. As seen in the present lot, his ‘lovers’ were often depicted nude and rendered in a “red, burnished, almost golden colour scheme…that brings the bodies alive.” (Padamsee and Garimella eds., p. 155) Padamsee’s lovers stylistically evolved over time from sharply defined figures to melancholic, almost abstracted figures - such as the present lot, which was painted at a later stage in his career.

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