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Saffronart | Evening Sale
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seems bursting with the sort of radiance which EI Greco saw
around the hills of Toledo.” (“The Painter’s Painter: Padamsee
Enters Exciting Phase,”
The Times of India
, Bombay, 1 April
1960) His observation about the brushwork is explained by
Padamsee: “When I did the Grey series, I was preoccupied
with using singular brush strokes across the canvas without
any interruptions. This was possible because I was using only
grey and did not need to stop. There was no distinction of
hue between the background and figure except that at one
point it would emerge.” (quoted in Padamsee and Garimella
eds., p. 180)
Krishen Khanna, Padamsee’s contemporary and close
friend, was mesmerised when he saw
Greek Landscape
on
the cover of the invitation to the Gallery 59 exhibition. In
a conversation with Saffronart, he recalled that it was a
Saturday afternoon in Kanpur when he saw the invitation.
Khanna recounted that he acquired the painting from Bal
Chhabda through a phone conversation. Chhabda said that
he would forgo his commission and taking into account
the sale of one of Khanna’s drawings, he would sell him the
painting for a thousand rupees. “So I agreed to Rs. 1,000
and he mailed this painting, and I got it in Kanpur. It was
stretched out by two servants for me to see, because we
didn’t have a wall big enough for this painting, you know.
And it stayed with me.”
Khanna later wrote to Padamsee in a letter dated 8 April
1960, saying, “My dear Akbar, I might as well be frank–I was
terribly envious that you had painted such a magnificent
painting... when I saw the painting I sat up. I had received
a shock and that hasn’t happened to me for a hell of a
long time... You see I had thought that this was the work
of someone quite unknown to us and I remarked to Renu
at that stage that there was a terrific painter somewhere
of whose existence we had not known about... It will be a
privilege to have this painting with us.”
The Grey Works also found admirers among fellow artists
apart from Krishen Khanna. Doctor, poet and painter Gieve
Patel recalled, “Nothing I had seen in the city till then had
moved me. The possibilities of what one could do seemed
tangibly present before me in those grey paintings... He is
the only Indian painter who has worked out in detail a self‒
conscious aesthetic of painting.” (quoted in Eunice de Souza,
Akbar Padamsee
, New Delhi: Art Heritage, 1981, p. 14) M F
Husain “picked up works of art that caught his fancy. He
was greatly impressed by Akbar’s canvases and booked the
painting titled
Juhu
for himself.” (Padamsee and Garimella
eds., p. 181) Artist Sudhir Patwardhan has said, “There can
be no two opinions that the painting represents the highest
achievement...” (Padamsee and Garimella eds., p. 189)
The present lot has been lent to exhibitions and
retrospectives over the years, but has long had a loving home
with artist Krishen Khanna. In a letter from Paris dated 6 June
1960 Padamsee wrote to Khanna, “I am delighted to have
one of my paintings in your collection.” (“Akbar Padamsee
Letters to Krishen Khanna,”
Critical Collective
, online) Krishen
Khanna recalls, “When Akbar Padamsee launched into his
black and white paintings in the late ‘50s, we all thought
that he had found his métier and he painted with such zest
and authority which seemed to confirm our feelings that we
were henceforth going to see only black and white paintings
from him.” (Padamsee and Garimella eds., pp. 182–183)
Ironically, Padamsee has never again painted in grey, moving
on to Metascapes after developing a unique construction
vocabulary with works such as
Greek Landscape
.
A letter written by Krishen Khanna to Akbar Padamsee, dated Kanpur, 8 April 1960
Image courtesy of Bhanumati Padamsee