Akbar Padamsee

Akbar Padamsee
Born	(1928-04-12)12 April 1928 Bombay, Maharashtra, India
Died	6 January 2020(2020-01-06) (aged 91) Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
Alma mater	Sir J.J. School of Art
Occupation	Painter
Children	Raisa Padamsee
Website	akbarpadamsee.net

Akbar Padamsee (12 April 1928 – 6 January 2020) was an Indian artist and painter, considered one of the pioneers in modern Indian painting along with S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza and M.F. Husain.^[1] Over the years he also worked with various mediums from oil painting, plastic emulsion, water colour, sculpture, printmaking, to computer graphics, and photography. In addition, he worked as a film maker, sculptor, photographer, engraver, and lithographer.^[2] Today his paintings are among the most valued by modern Indian artists. His painting Reclining Nude was sold for US$1,426,500 at Sotheby's in New York on 25 March 2011.^[1][3]

He was awarded the Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowship (Lalit Kala Ratna) by the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Arts, in 2004,^[4] the Kalidas Samman from the Madhya Pradesh Government in 1997 for Plastic Arts and the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour in 2010.^[5]

Padamsee was born into a traditional Khoja Muslim family hailing from the Kutch region of Gujarat.^[2] Their ancestors had belonged to the Cāraṇa caste of court poets and historians. The family had been settled in the nearby Kathiawar region for some generations; Padamsee's grandfather, who had been the sarpanch (headman) of Vāghnagar, a village in Bhavnagar district, had earned the honorific name "Padamsee" (a corruption of "Padmashree") after he distributed his entire granary to the village during a famine. His original family name was "Charanyas", due to their ancestors being Charanas or court poets.^[1][2]

Padamsee's father, Hassan Padamsee, was an affluent businessman who owned 10 buildings and also ran a glassware and furniture business. His mother, Jenabhai Padamsee, was a home-maker. Akbar Padamsee was one of their eight children; one of his brothers is the actor Alyque Padamsee. Although rich, the family was not well-educated, and neither of his parents had received much education. Alyque and his brothers (but not his sisters) were the first to attend school and learn English there; the parents later picked up a smattering of the language from their sons.^[6]

Early in life, he started copying images from The Illustrated Weekly of India magazine in his father's accounts books at their store on Chakla Street, in South Mumbai.^[1] He studied at St. Xavier's High School, Fort, and it was here that met his first mentor, his teacher Shirsat, a watercolourist. He first learned this medium, followed by classes on nudes at Charni Road in preparation for his studies at the Sir J.J. School of Art. As a result, he was allowed to join the course directly in its third year. He was still studying fine art at the school, when the Progressive Artists' Group (PAG) was formed in 1947 by Francis Newton Souza, S. H. Raza, and M. F. Husain. The group was to have a lasting impact on Indian art. By the time he received his diploma he was already associated with the group.^[2]

Akbar married Solange Gounelle, in Paris in 1954. The couple had one daughter, Raisa Padamsee.

Akbar moved to India in 1968 and lived and worked in Mumbai with his wife Bhanumati Padamsee ^[7]

He had a number of siblings, but the most notable of them is Alyque Padamsee, who was a celebrated theatre personality & advertising mogul who headed the Lintas Bombay Ad agency.

In the last years of his life, Padamsee and his wife Bhanu are reported to have moved into the Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore permanently, after having visited the centre a few times several years ago.^[8]

In late 1950, Raza was awarded a French government scholarship, and he invited Padamsee to accompany him to Paris. Padamsee left for Paris in 1951, where artist Krishna Reddy introduced him to the surrealist Stanley Hayter, who became his next mentor. Padmasee soon joined his studio, "Atelier 17". His first exhibition was held in Paris in 1952. The artists exhibited anonymously, thus he shared the prize awarded by the French magazine Journal d'Arte with the painter Jean Carzou.^[1]

His very first solo show was held at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 1954, and soon he became one of leading artists. He received the Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowship in 1962, a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1965 and was subsequently invited to be an artist-in-residence by the University of Wisconsin–Stout. He returned to India in 1967.^[2]

As a member of many artistic committees, he took part in the development of the collections of the Bharat Bhawan museum of Bhopal, and created the VIEW (Vision Exchange Workshop). He curated major cultural events and received many distinctions such as the Padma Shri in 2009.

His work is introspective; his "Metascapes" or his "Mirror Images" are abstract images formed from the search for a formal logic. His topics include landscapes, nudes, heads and he has done portraits created in pencil and charcoal. The depth which emerges from his oil-based works, emanates from the coloured matter. This creates a pictorial technique juxtaposing emerging split forms.

He has done, in addition to his painted work, black and white photographs which use light to create dimension. Padamsee always explored new plastic genres; he also explored computers in "Compugraphics".

He lived in South Mumbai with his wife Bhanumati, and worked at his studio in Prabhadevi. He died on 6 January 2020 at the age of 91.^[9]

Between 1969 and 1970, Akbar Padamsee, one of the pioneers of Modern Indian painting, made a rare 16mm experimental film titled Syzygy.^[10] This was a silent animation film made up solely of lines and dots and the connections between them. This film was made using a code or algorithm and can now be seen as an early example of generative art. The word syzygy is often used to describe interesting configurations of astronomical objects in general. With its attempt at pure form, it is also a precursor to computer art or digital art, despite being entirely hand-made.^[10]

In 2015, filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia discovered that Padamsee had made a second film that had fallen into obscurity. Titled Events In A Cloud Chamber, was shot on a 16mm Bolex camera. The film ran for six minutes and featured a single image of a dreamlike terrain. Inspired by one of Padamsee's own oil paintings, he had experimented with a new technique of superimposing shapes formed with stencils and a carousel slide projector. The abstract electronic soundtrack was composed in 1969 by Geeta Sarabhai, thereby qualifying her as the first female electronic musician in India.^[11]

After just a handful of screenings in 1970, the film was shipped to an art expo in New Delhi where it was misplaced. The reversal print is now lost and no copies exist.^[11]

Between 2015 and 2016, Ashim Ahluwalia worked with Padamsee, who was then almost 89 years old, to try and remake the lost film from memory. The filmmaker managed to track down the original tapes of Sarabhai’s score but they had been demagnetized. Ahluwalia’s 2016 film, also called Events In A Cloud Chamber as a result of their collaboration and premiered at the Venice Film Festival followed by screenings at The Museum of Modern Art and other venues, renewing interest in Padamsee’s neglected film work.^[11]

Syzygy has recently had a revival screening at the Camden Arts Centre in an exhibition titled “Zigzag Afterlives: film experiments from the 1960s and 1970s in India” by curator Nancy Adajania. It was included in the exhibition “Mud Muses” at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.^[12]

• Padamsee, Padamsee, Text by Shamlal, Published by Pundole Art Gallery`, 2004
• Padamsee, Works on Paper-Critical Boundaries, Text by Shamlal, Published by Vakils & Sons, 1964
• Padamsee, Work in language, Marg/Pundole gallery, 372 p, 348 ill; Mumbai 2009,
• Padamsee, Works and Words, film by Laurent Brégeat, 55mn, Lalit Kala Akademi, 2010^[13]

• 2004 - Lalit Kala Ratna, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
• 1997–98 - Kalidas Samman by the Madhya Pradesh Government
• 1969 - Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship^[14]
• 1967 - Artist in Residence, Stout State University, Wisconsin
• 1965 - J.D. Rockefeller IIIrd Fund, Fellowship

• Akbar Padamsee: Work in Language, by Bhanumati Padamsee, Annapurna Garimella. Marg Publications, 2010. ISBN 81-85026-91-2.

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