Akbar Padamsee

Akbar Padamsee, who was born in 1928 in Bombay, moved to live and work in France after earning a diploma in painting from the Sir J J School of Arts in 1951. On behalf of the Journal d’Art, Andre Breton presented him with a prize in 1952. The same year, Galerie Saint Placide in Paris hosted Padamsee’s first solo exhibition. 

Padamsee has experimented with a variety of media, including oil on canvas, photography, and digital printmaking, according to his innovative attitude. The artist communicates mastery over shape, colour, and space regardless of the medium he chooses. Padamsee, who is most recognised for his Metascapes, Mirror Images, and Grey Series, has also dabbled in sculpture, filmmaking, and writing as an art critic.Padamsee’s interest in structure and form takes shape from landscapes and is borne from an interest in Sanskrit texts such as the Abhijanashakuntalam. His Mirror Images show that he is troubled by existence’s duality. He approaches both heads and portraits with the same focus on creating form rather than the finer points of portraiture. His “Gandhi” series of watercolour and charcoal paintings on paper from 1997 was the only time he produced recognisable portraits.