Page 102 - Pundole's Auction M0015

51 #
PROPERTY FROM THE GLENBARRA ART MUSEUM, JAPAN
AKBAR PADAMSEE
b.?1928
Metascape
Oil on canvas
1972
48¼ × 68 in. (122.5 × 172.8 cm.)
Signed and dated ‘PADAMSEE / 72’ lower right
??2,00,00,000?–?3,00,00,000
$ 298,510?–?447,760
EXHIBITED:
Akbar Padamsee, Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai, March 18?
–?April 5, 1972.
LITERATURE:
Bhanumati Padamsee and Annapurna Garimella ed., Akbar
Padamsee – Work in Language, Mumbai, 2010, p. 244, fig. 5,
illustrated.
Image-Beyond Image Contemporary Indian Paintings from
the Collection of Glenbarra Art Museum Japan, exhibition
catalogue, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 1997,
unpaginated, illustrated.
‘The Metascapes of Akbar Padamsee archetypal and
timeless, include both a truly detached analytical approach
and fascination for tautologic rules. In these paintings
the image prods the exercise, form being distilled to reveal
the ore. Curiously the endeavor is as old as it is modern:
the artistic pursuit of a philosophical intent.’ (Mala Marwah, though one cannot say Akbar is particularly concerned
‘Akbar Padamsee – A Conversation’, Lalit Kala Contemporary
23, April 1977, p. 36)
Padamsee’s Metascapes, begun in the 1970s, are
polychrome landscapes that use thick impasto paint
applied with a palette knife to show the seemingly typical
elements of nature. The choice of name, however, suggests
that his is a more complex philosophy that goes beyond
the superficial delineations created by form, colour and
shape. The elements are reduced to the basics, which
allows them to be infused with a sense of timelessness
that defies temporality. Unlike other landscape artists who
are recording a particular time and place in their works,
Padamsee ‘is not interested in location or landscapes.
My general theme is nature – mountains, trees, water,
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the elements – and obviously one is influenced by the
environment, but I’m not interested in painting Rajasthan
or the desert or whatever. When I paint a tree, a mountain
or a river, I am really interested in ‘the river’, ‘the mountain’,
‘the tree’. The [Metascape] paintings are neither abstract
nor representational.’ (Padamsee in conversation with
Eunice de Souza, ‘Akbar Padamsee’s Metascapes’, The
Economic Times, November 30, 1974)
These elements also play a philosophical role in
Padamsee’s works, where they represent earth, water, air
and fire. Furthermore, even though the forms such as the
sky, the earth, mountains and rivers are recognisable, and
appear repeatedly in all the Metascapes, their meaning
changes in every composition, similar to ‘…words within a
sentence must themselves undergo a subtle modification
or alteration of intention. Akbar consciously and
consistently concerns himself with form: it is his means.
There is a constant two-way pull between intuited or
emoted perception and his conceptual grammar of
formalism, the means. Both are valid ways of perceiving.’
(Pria Karunakar, ‘Akbar Padamsee – Nature as Landscape’,
Lalit Kala Contemporary 23, April 1977, p.?31) Despite this
dual manner of understanding Padamsee’s Metascapes, it
is apparent that form remains of primary importance to
Padamsee and his specific use of colour and the process
of applying paint enables him to fully develop his thoughts
and the structure of the work.
Geeta Kapur, in her seminal book on India’s Modernists,
describes Padamsee’s Metascapes. ‘A series of paintings
done since 1970 offers the most consummate examples
of his relationship to nature. Here he reveals his sensuous
delight at the luxuriance of nature. One is invited to cover
the terrain with one’s senses, feeling the rich grain of the
soil, the mineral rocks, the foliage of trees and bushes; to
feel the smooth transparence of a lake and touch the
flaming moon with one’s hands as one touches the earth.
The landscape has a density and it has a sonority; for even
with the analogous nature of music and painting (he is not
only a very silent person, one imagines him sealed
against all sounds, musical or otherwise), one hears the
throbbing cadence of colour split into its myriad tonalities.
The undertone is monotonous and passionate. And the
harmony is broad in scope. It lifts itself in a sweep even
as from its palpable base the landscape rises to the level
of a vision.’ (Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New
Delhi, 1978, p.?105)