Akbar Padamsee
Padamsee graduated from the Sir J.J. School of Art in 1940 with a diploma in painting and series of sculpture classes behind him. His formal education was in the fine arts. Although he is best known as a painter, Akbar Padamsee has experimented with film-making, sculpture, and writing as an art critic. The more familiar of his body of works are the “metascapes”, ” mirror images”, (non-figurative ), the figures & “heads”. he keeps going back and forth between them. The metascapes are a development from the landscapes. The mirror images show his concern with the duality of existence, of form & space. The figure is treated not as an individual, not even in the heads where the association with portraiture is even stronger. The only occasion when he has handled portraits, is in 1997, with the Gandhi series, done on paper with water colours & charcoals. Padamsee’s pioneering spirit has allowed him to experiment with a wide range of mediums: the gamut of the traditional ones, to the most recent of the additions of computer graphics. Whatever his chosen medium he conveys a command over use of space form & colour. The artist lives and works in Mumbai
