Has Akbar Padamsee been ignored for too long? Yes and no.
All artists have their day in the sun, only some fall under the shadow lines so even though you know they are noteworthy, they fail to create a significant market constituency. That seems to be the case with Akbar Padamsee, who has been acknowledged among India’s more critically acclaimed artists. Yet, for most of his career he has been eclipsed by the high noon of his peers.
An associate of the Progressive Artists’ Group whose leadership in the soul of modern art has been unquestionable, one can hardly argue that Padamsee has been ignored. Critics and collectors agree that he enjoys both style- and name-recognition. He is never lightly dismissed by investors or collectors, his work is studied by scholars, yet he has remained an adjunct, a me-too, almost always the secondary but hardly ever the primary artist in any room or on any wall.
If there are reasons for this — and there are — it is fortuitous that the 82-year-old artist appears finally to be getting his legitimate due. Traditionally, he has always been part of gallery and auction sales but for the first time he is in all the important auctions this spring, and he seems to be getting his recognition the only way most of us acknowledge it: With prices that are high-going-on-higher. While we await results for the Christie’s sale of Tuesday in New York (estimate Rs 1.2-1.6 crore) and the Sotheby’s auction today, also in New York (estimate Rs 37-36 lakh), it is interesting that Christ at last weekend’s Osian’s sale went down for Rs 1.92 crore (on an estimate of Rs 84 lakh-1.26 crore) while Prophet at Saffronart the week before made a killing with Rs 1.25 crore (on an estimate of Rs 40-50 lakh).
There is no doubt that these are “important” works, but similarly notable paintings by Padamsee have come up for auction before as well. Why are his prices turning strong now?
A student of the JJ School of Art and considered an “intellectual artist” by critics, Padamsee’s style of painting is key to his market. Padamsee shares his choice of subjects with some of the Progressives, but unlike them his voice has been more gently modulated. Padamsee has most in common with F N Souza (his penchant for heads, his preoccupation with Christianity) and K H Ara (all three have painted nudes) — but where Souza is brutal in his lines and Ara assertive, Padamsee’s subjects remain strangely acquiescent. It is almost as though they sublimate themselves while it is as a master-colourist that he excels.
Padamsee layers his works in a complex patina, but with his monochromatic, almost reticent use of colours and near-contrite outlines and figures, he seems to be apologising to the viewer who is then drawn to comparisons with the more forceful lines of the other artists. It is this subservience of colour and form that has relegated Padamsee to the wings. People are drawn to his hauntingly layered patinas, but overlook him because his contemporaries are so much more overwhelming, perhaps because their work resounds with urgency where Padamsee’s is contemplative. It is ironical to note, then, that in both the Osian’s and Saffronart sales, the two benchmark prices by Padamsee were bagged for works with a strong visual presence, reminiscent at some level of the forceful lines used by Souza.
Will Padamsee always carry the cross of his eerie figures, their sorrow unable to transcend into more joyful prices? Not if the current surge in his market is any indication. And the interest could sustain for a number of reasons: investors and serious collectors are looking at senior artists on whom to place their long-term bets; that among them, his peers are either too expensive (Tyeb Mehta, S H Raza) or too profuse (F N Souza, M F Husain), or too linked with a single theme (Krishen Khanna’s bandwallahs); or simply bored with the same artists riding the marquee; but most of all because he is a gifted artist whose strength as a colourist lends him his unique position.
With interest in contemporaries somewhat on the wane, Padamsee is brilliantly poised to emerge from the shadow lines he has inhabited for most of his career. He might not be the artist every Indian instantly recognises, or acknowledges (yet), but in the manner in which his market prices are being revised, he might just be the next poster boy for the escalation that punters say is on the horizon. And while his range of subjects may be limited to abstracts, heads and nudes, there’s ample evidence to suggest that his longevity in the shadows alone will power his rise as the next grandee of the art market.
These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which the writer is associated.