Javed Akhtar (b. 1990) is an Indian-born painter based in Margate, UK. He holds an MFA in Painting from Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati University, Shantiniketan, and a BFA in Painting from the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. From 2015 to 2017, he was a research scholar in Far Eastern art at Nanjing University of the Arts, China.

Akhtar has exhibited widely across India, China, and South Korea, including at CIMA, Nandan, Birla Academy, AMNUA Museum of Art, and the Seoul Museum of Art. He was an artist-in-residence at the Seoul Museum of Art in 2019 and has received awards and support including the Chinese Government Scholarship Award, the Prince Claus Mobility Fund, and the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Scholarship.

Working primarily in painting, Akhtar explores socio-political and environmental conditions through figurative and narrative imagery. His work combines realism with subtle elements of the magical to reflect states of anxiety, uncertainty, and transformation, treating painting as both a method of inquiry and a sustained process of reflection.