PRESS RELEASE*
Akbar Padamsee
METASCAPE TO HUMANSCAPE
Aicon Gallery, Palo Alto
April 6 - May 6, 2007
Opening reception, April 6, 6-9pm
Akbar Padamsee is a legendary Indian artist and one of the founding fathers of Indian modern art. He exhibited with The Progressive Artists' Group, a group that formed on the eve of India's independence from Britain in 1947. The members of this group included F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza and M.F. Husain and they rebelled against both the academic Western styles of British art that were being taught at the art schools and the revival of the folk art tradition. Instead they strove towards creating their own personal styles, and Padamsee was an influential part of heralding a new modern and international energy within Indian art.
Padamsee left India for the vibrant art center of Paris in 1951, and the Progressive Artists' Group formally dissolved in 1954 however their members continue to be beacons of Indian modern art to this day. In 1959 Padamsee was part of another ground breaking exhibition for Indian modern art. He exhibited in the first show to seriously expose modern Indian art in the world's art capital, New York. The exhibition was entitled "Trends in Contemporary Paintings from India" and was shown at the Graham Gallery. Padamsee was one of eight prominent Indian artists to show at this exhibition alongside Souza, Raza, Husain and Gaitonde.
Akbar Padamsee was born in Mumbai in 1928 and he now lives and works there having returned to India in 1967 after some time in New York. He is renowned for his metaphysical landscape paintings as well as his nudes, hence the title of this exhibition Humanscape to Metascape. The works in this show bring together some of his classical works, including sketches from the artist's youth, recent portraits in oil as well as a series of black and white photographs of the female nude. In these works he treats the female form almost totally abstractly using it as a means to explore light and shade, line and form.
Padamsee has received numerous awards including the prestigious Nehru Fellowship in 1969-70 and the Bank of India Excellence Award for 1998. He has continued to participate in important group shows and solo exhibitions throughout his career, these include the 1980 Art Heritage, New Delhi solo retrospective exhibition in New Delhi and Mumbai, the International Triennials in India and the Biennales of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Tokyo and Venice, the "Festival of India" exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1982, and the National Exhibition of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi in 1991. He founded a Vision Exchange Workshop for artists and filmmakers, and made short films, such as Syzgy where he animated a set of his geometric drawings and in 1991, he participated in the first computer-art exhibition in India, "State of Art" in Mumbai.
For more information on these upcoming events, contact:
Nuala Mellett, Gallery Director, nuala@artsindia.com (650)321-4900
About ArtsIndia West:
ArtsIndia West is a contemporary Indian art gallery that hosts monthly exhibitions of both emerging talent and well established artists. It is the first Indian art gallery in the United States outside New York City and it opened in November 2004. It has hosted many landmark exhibitions including "Ashta Nayak: Eight Founders of Indian Art". The mother gallery, Gallery Arts India, is located on Fifth Avenue in New York and is the largest gallery for Indian contemporary art outside India. ArtsIndia Group are expanding to open the largest Indian art gallery in London in March 2007 - www.artsindia.com.