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PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED FAMILY COLLECTION, NEW DELHI
23
AKBAR PADAMSEE
(b. 1928)
Untitled
Signed and dated 'PADAMSEE '2004' (upper right)
2004
Oil on canvas
41.5 x 23.75 in (105.6 x 60.1 cm)
$ 53,035 - 68,185
Rs 35,00,000 - 45,00,000
Akbar Padamsee painted portraits
for some time in the 1950s, after
which he concentrated on developing
his vocabulary for cityscapes and
metascapes. He returned to the portrait
in the 1980s. He endows this work
from 2004 with “...a monumentality
and ponderousness to the figures.”
(Bhanumati Padamsee and Annapurna
Garimella eds.,
Akbar Padamsee: Work in
Language
, Mumbai: Marg Publications
and Pundole Art Gallery, 2010, p. 90)
According to art critic Ranjit Hoskote,
“His aim is to allude to the human
face in the border zone between
likeness and presence, an aim he shares
with the Byzantine iconographers
of the 6
th
and 7
th
centuries AD, who
were similarly preoccupied with the
reconciliation of numinous spirit with
recognisable body. Padamsee dwells
on the fascination with one’s own
face that one experiences on looking
into the mirror… In gazing at these
apparently remote figures, we confront
our own predicaments, are returned
to the loom of time.”(“The Ricochet of
the Line,”
Akbar Padamsee: Drawings,
Watercolours, Photographs
, Mumbai:
Pundole Art Gallery, 2004, pp. 4-5)
PROVENANCE:
Saffronart, 6-8 December 2005, lot 69
22
S H RAZA
(1922 - 2016)
Untitled
Signed and dated 'RAZA 58' (lower left)
1958
Acrylic on masonite board
21.25 x 5 in (53.7 x 12.8 cm)
$ 18,185 - 22,730
Rs 12,00,000 - 15,00,000
PROVENANCE:
Saffronart, 6-7 December 2006, lot 139
Private Collection, Mumbai
“More than being only abstract or
modern or symbolic or religious,
it is important that there should
be an integration of vital form
and a mystic, emotional, divine
perception of this universe, which is
a very complex matter.”
S H RAZA