Farewell, gentle giant

Padamsee, unlike several of his peers from the Progressive Artists Group, lived to see his success as well as his contribution to the field of art

It is a pity that the first column of 2020 should begin with an obituary marking the passing of one of the last remaining giants of the Indian art world. Ninety-one-year-old Akbar Padamsee went gently into the Coimbatore night, away from his home in Mumbai, but he did not go unmourned. His was a familiar, gentle, even wise presence recognised by art lovers as not very different from the quietly melancholic faces of so many of his portraits of anonymous people rendered in a warm, orange haze. His outings over the last years had become restricted; he spoke little and