Akbar Padamsee  (1928–2020) was a pioneering modernist artist. His formal artistic language was based on an interplay between line and form. While many of his early works were concerned with the human body, Padamsee also worked on cityscapes and spatial renderings with architectural forms strung together.
Padamsee was trained at Bombay’s J.J. School of Art (1948–1951). There he spent most of his time in the library, reading books on theory and Chinese painting. This was the time when the Progressive Artists Group (PAG) was formed and he interacted with its members. Padamsee also knew the Central European émigrés Emanuel Schlesinger, Walter and Käthe Langhammer and Rudi von Leyden. He did not think highly of Langhammer and in fact even considered that he was a bad painter.
Padamsee was one of many South Asian artists who headed to Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Unlike others, though, he did not attend any of the art schools and instead used his time in Paris focusing on work and gaining maximum cultural exposure. During this time, his work was characterised by strong outlines and a pronounced two-dimensionality.
In 1954, shortly after his return to Bombay, Akbar Padamsee held his first solo exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery. The Jehangir Art Gallery had only opened in 1952 and made a huge contribution to the Bombay art world. Within this exhibition, Padamsee’s mainly figurative paintings of male and female heads and torsos, male and female nudes, and cityscapes were initially received favourably. One day after the opening, however, his paintings Lovers I (1952) and Lovers II (1952) attracted negative attention and were censored by the authorities. When the artist refused to take the paintings down, he was arrested. He was released on bail that same day. The two paintings that caused all the fuss showed a male figure touching the breast of a female figure. The court case that followed set a precedent in India, with supporters such as Karl Khandalawala,  Rudi von Leyden, and others presenting expert testimonies which brought the court to judge in favour of the artist. Marg printed the entire judgement in its September issue the following year (Marg vol. 7, no. 4, September 1954, 90f). The art historical references that were used in the trial to to explain Padamsee’s artistic intentions and build a defence on behalf of the artist drew on classical Western art as well as on Indian art such as the erotic sculptures at Khajuraho.
Akbar Padamsee’s case was argued along the lines and the idea of artistic autonomy and thereby defended modernist art in India successfully. Four decades later, M.F. Husain became the target of right-wing Hindu groups whose campaigns culminated in 2006 with threats of violence and legal prosecution. In Husain’s case, as in Padamsee’s, judgment was ruled in favour of the artist and against the charges of obscenity. However, the 1954 court case and Padamsee's nine-month fight for the right to paint and exhibit freely, left a mark on the artist which caused him to return to Paris.