Akbar Padamsee was an Indian modernist painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He was born in Mumbai, India. Padamsee studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art in Mumbai and later at the École de BeauxArts in Paris. His early works were influenced by the European modernist movements, particularly the School of Paris. Over the years, he developed his distinctive style characterized by a subtle color palette and a focus on form and structure.

After graduating from the J. J. School of Art in 1951, Akbar Padamsee spent the 1950s and 1960s travelling extensively between Bombay and Paris. Art critic Beth Citron notes, “at the start of the 1960s, Padamsee began an earnest investigation of light, color and form through village landscape studies, following a classically French tradition that included artists from Lorrain and Corot to Cezanne.”

One of his notable series is the “Metascapes”, which are abstract landscapes that explore the relationship between form and space. In early 1960s, Padamsee painted in an expressionist style that which served as transition from landscapes with recognizable architectural forms to the richly hued, abstracted compositions of his “Metascapes” in the 1970s.