Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern Fine Arts | June 2017

My theme has always been people and portraits. The human figure and the face are all themes I am obsessed with. But Padamsee’s nudes are unique, there is no animality, no display of libido and the woman is never reduced to an object of sexual prey. Be it on paper or canvas, he paints nudes mostly in black and grey using a thick brush and then highlights the chosen areas with charcoal. He uses charcoal when the paint is still wet and ultimately sprinkles linseed oil that helps settle the colour on the canvas…He said somewhere that compositions did not interest him for they can be like stories. ‘I don’t mind reading one but I have none to tell. Expression is all the more powerful when it is about a solitary figure or just a face’…The extraordinary simplification of forms reduces his nudes to absolute essentials. He sacrifices minute details to the exquisite arrangement of tones. Arup K. Dutta rpt. in Akbar Padamsee. Sanskriti Art Gallery ExC1992. Indian Modern Fine Arts | 135