A selection of late artist Akbar Padamsee’s works, made between 2014-2015, are on display for the first time in the Capital

Bhanu Padamse, wife of Late Akbar Padamse, poses for a photograph at an Exhibtion of his late works at the Triveni Kala Sangam in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)

Recognised as one of India art’s foremost modernists, Padamsee’s journey as an artist began early, possibly through photographs of gods and goddesses that his nanny shared with him, and the antique Irani furniture and flower vases that adorned his home. Born in Mumbai to a Khoja Muslim family that traced its roots to Gujarat, the youngest of eight siblings recalled drawing animal-shaped biscuits as a child and copying images from the journal The Illustrated Weekly of India in the account books at his father’s shop of imported glass lanterns on Chakla Street. While formal art training began at St Xavier’s High School, he also took lessons in nudes studies. At the age of seven, he lost his speech after a freak accident and could speak again only after he was 21. “Many people tell me that being mute gave me the inner strength to produce the kind of work I did later,” he told The Indian Express in an interview in 2015.

He was still a student at the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai when artist SH Raza recognised his talent, and when the latter was going to France on a scholarship in 1950, he invited Padamsee to accompany him. Padamsee agreed at once despite his family’s reluctance. The European exposure was to completely alter his oeuvre, with the defining contours of the figures gradually fading and the expanse widening. He studied the works of Western masters such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and worked from surrealist artist Stanley Hayter’s studio, Atelier 17, an experimental workshop for graphic art. Though he made frequent trips to India, he only moved back in the late ’60s, after spending years in Paris and later, a stint in the US, where he travelled on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship. “He always intended to return to India. His passport was never not Indian,” says Bhanu. She met him as a student at JJ School of Art on a visit to his retrospective exhibition in 1980 at Jehangir Art Gallery. The two got married in 1991.

Head, Watercolour on paper,42 x 30 cm by Akbar Padmasee

Known for his constant experiments, the “grammarian of art” was always learning and his observations appeared in his works in myriad ways. “He would remember the details and some elements would come into his work,” says Bhanu. Borrowing from Chinese writings and Paul Klee’s pedagogical diagrams, an integral part of his life and works were also verses from the Gita, Vedas and the Upanishads. The theories of aesthetics were prominent in his later works, including the metascapes in the ’70s — that brought together landscapes and cityscapes – where he referenced Kalidasa’s Abhijnanasakuntalam. If the mirror images in the ’90s depicted his concern with duality, in 1969, his Vision Exchange Workshop in Mumbai provided artists with resources to experiment with photography and filmmaking. In 2016, Greek Landscapes, one of his works from the Grey series that featured multidimensional greys, sold at an auction for Rs 19.19 crore. It had been in the possession of fellow artist and friend Krishen Khanna. “I had bought it in 1960 from (artist and collector) Bal Chhabda for Rs 1,000 through a phone conversation,” recalled Khanna in an interview to The Indian Express.

The exhibition in Delhi, Bhanu notes, is a selection. There are several more works of the artist that are yet to become public. Of the works on display, there is a lot to interpret. The largely inward portraits hide more than they tell. It is, perhaps, what Padamsee intended for them, as he stated in the 2015 interview, “I draw my figures and forms from the world that I know intimately but viewers also find there is a sense of detachment or alienation in them. My figures are not heroic creatures, nor are they angst-ridden, shattered beings. They exist, and on their flesh and bones is stamped the experience of living.”