18 Facts About Akbar Padamsee

Akbar Padamsee's painting Reclining Nude was sold for US$1,426,500 at Sotheby's in New York on 25 March 2011.

Akbar Padamsee was awarded the Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowship by the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Arts, in 2004, the Kalidas Samman from the Madhya Pradesh Government in 1997 for Plastic Arts and the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour in 2010.

Akbar Padamsee's father, Hassan Akbar Padamsee, was an affluent businessman who owned 10 buildings and ran a glassware and furniture business.

Akbar Padamsee was one of their eight children; one of his brothers is the actor Alyque Padamsee.

Akbar Padamsee studied at St Xavier's High School, Fort, and it was here that met his first mentor, his teacher Shirsat, a watercolourist.

Akbar Padamsee first learned this medium, followed by classes on nudes at Charni Road in preparation for his studies at the Sir JJ School of Art.

Akbar Padamsee was still studying fine art at the school, when the Progressive Artists' Group was formed in 1947 by Francis Newton Souza, S H Raza, and M F Husain.

Akbar Padamsee left for Paris in 1951, where artist Krishna Reddy introduced him to the surrealist Stanley Hayter, who became his next mentor.

Akbar Padamsee curated major cultural events and received many distinctions such as the Padma Shri in 2009.

Akbar Padamsee's work is introspective; his "Metascapes" or his "Mirror Images" are abstract images formed from the search for a formal logic.

Akbar Padamsee's topics include landscapes, nudes, heads and he has done portraits created in pencil and charcoal.

Akbar Padamsee has done, in addition to his painted work, black and white photographs which use light to create dimension.

Akbar Padamsee always explored new plastic genres; he explored computers in "Compugraphics".

Akbar Padamsee lived in South Mumbai with his wife Bhanumati, and worked at his studio in Prabhadevi.

Akbar Padamsee died on 6 January 2020 at the age of 91.

In 2015, filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia discovered that Akbar Padamsee had made a second film that had fallen into obscurity.

Between 2015 and 2016, Ashim Ahluwalia worked with Akbar Padamsee, who was then almost 89 years old, to try and remake the lost film from memory.

Ahluwalia's 2016 film, called Events In A Cloud Chamber as a result of their collaboration and premiered at the Venice Film Festival followed by screenings at The Museum of Modern Art and other venues, renewing interest in Akbar Padamsee's neglected film work.