Akbar Padamsee - Interview by Vandana Shukla - Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi скачать в хорошем качестве

Akbar Padamsee - Interview by Vandana Shukla - Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi

This interview was recorded when Akbar Padamsee came to Chandigarh for an audio visual lecture at the invitation of Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi. Akbar Padamsee was born in Mumbai in 1928. He received his art education from Sir J. J. School of Art in Mumbai at the time when the Progressive Artists' Group announced itself on the Indian art scene in 1947. Padamsee went to live and work in France in 1951. In 1952, he was awarded a prize by Andre Breton, known as the pope of surrealism, on behalf of the Journale d'art. His very first solo show was held in Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai in 1954. Though widely spoken of as a modernist, Padamsee continues to resist easy categorization. Throughout his illustrious career spanning six decades, he has remained fiercely experimental and individualistic. Renouncing the rich colour palette of his early years, he chose to paint in grey between the years 1959-1960 stating, "Grey is without prejudice; it does not discriminate between object and space". Akbar Padamsee's artistic oeuvre is a formal exploration of a few chosen genres- prophets, heads, couples, still-life, grey works, metascapes, mirror - images and tertiaries , across a multitude of media -- oil painting, plastic emulsion, water colour, sculpture, printmaking, computer graphics, and photography. In 1962, Padamsee was awarded a gold medal from the Lalit Kala Akademi, and in 1965 a fellowship from the J. D. Rockefeller Foundation. Subsequently he was invited to be an artist-in-residence by Stout State University, Wisconsin. In 1967 a solo exhibition of his paintings was held at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, Canada, after which he returned to India. In 1969-71, with the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship funds he set up inter-art Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW), where artists and filmmakers could freely experiment across various disciplines and practices which is remembered to this day as a landmark initiative. Padamsee himself made two short abstract films - Syzygy and Events in a Cloud Chamber, where he animated a set of geometric drawings. Since the seventies, his work is seen to alternate between two major genres: luminous metascapes - his signature works, and the human figure which he continues to imbue with an arresting presence. He has a deep and abiding interest in Sanskrit texts, a glimpse of which finds resonance in his statement on sun-moon metascapes of the mid seventies. In an interview Padamsee says "in the introductory stanzas of Kalidasa's Abhijnanashakuntalam he describes the sun and the moon as the controllers on time -- 'ye dve kal vighattah', and water as a source of all seeds -- "sarva beej prakriti". I would never have thought of painting the sun and the moon together if it were not for this. I felt I could use the elements -- water, earth, sky -- without referring to any particular landscape -- a metaphysical landscape". He has participated in exhibitions and Biennales -- Venice, 1953 and 1955; Sao Paulo and Tokyo in 1959; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford 1981; Royal Academy of Arts, London 1982 and National des Arts Plastiques, Paris, 1985. In 1980, a retrospective of his work was organized by the Art Heritage Gallery, in Mumbai and New Delhi. Akbar Padamsee was awarded the prestigious Kalidas Samman by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1997. Other awards include the Lalit Kala Ratna Puraskar in 2004, the Dayawati Modi Award in 2007, ''Roopdhar" award by Bombay Art Society - 2008 and Kailash Lalit Kala award in 2010. He was awarded the Padama Bhushan by the Government of india in 2010. Akbar Padamsee lives and works in Mumbai, India. www.lalitkalachandigarh.com [email protected]