Akbar Padamsee

Akbar Padamsee (12 April 1928 – 10 January 2020)

Akbar Padamsee represents expansiveness. A painter who painted both abstracts and figures, in his inimitable cohesive style, without any disjointed-ness. 

As viewers we accept abstract landscapes, while additionally the figures and portraits of Gandhi show another manifestation of the artist expression. 
He was multi-disciplinary artist and his repertoire included paintings, sculptures, photography, as well some dabbling in film making. He didn’t go far with film making due to lack of patronage and audience. His film titled ‘Syzygy’ is a trajectory of dots and lines, to explore form and space. Padamsee used algorithms as early as 1969, what today we would categorize as generative art. Padamsee continued to embrace new media, when computer generated art became a thing in the late 1990’s he was amongst the first artist to create works that resulted in an exhibition in the Jehangir Art Gallery. 

The basis of his ability to move from one medium to another and traverse from figuration to abstract is his deep thought process. He is called as a thinking artist, engaged in philosophy. He also learnt Sanskrit to able to read firsthand the Upanishads and classics of Indian tradition. Moreover, he was firmly grounded in the theoretical and technical aspects of picture making, which equipped him to make works without boundaries of form or material. 

Akbar Padamsee completed his formal education in art from the Sir JJ School of Art in 1951, soon after which he moved to Paris, only to return to India in the 1960’s. He was awarded with the Padma Bhushan in 2010. Previously he was awarded the JD Rockefeller scholarship in 1965 and the Kalidas Samman award by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1997. Padamsee passed away in 2020.