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Lot 47

 

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"And if I could, I'd always choose evil and perversity, hell and brimstones... Perhaps God loves me but I don't know it. I don't know good from evil, purity from perversity, hell from pleasure, brimstones from snowflakes, corruption from honesty... All these are one and the same to me. I carry the burden of oneness in nothingness." - F N SOUZA

F N Souza had achieved considerable critical acclaim in London by the time he painted... "And if I could, I'd always choose evil and perversity, hell and brimstones... Perhaps God loves me but I don't know it. I don't know good from evil, purity from perversity, hell from pleasure, brimstones from snowflakes, corruption from honesty... All these are one and the same to me. I carry the burden of oneness in nothingness." - F N SOUZA

F N Souza had achieved considerable critical acclaim in London by the time he painted the present lot in 1961. Lovers in the Park combines two of Souza's primary preoccupations: landscapes painted in frenzied brushstrokes suggesting cataclysmic doom, and figures, male and female, caught in a moment of passion. In his energetic, gestural treatment of the canvas-which depicts a forest green park with the amorous couple in the centre by the banks of a tumultuous river-Souza conveys an atmosphere of urgency. The appearance of flooding, as seen in the present lot, has biblical overtones. In a 1962 Gallery One exhibition catalogue, Andrew Sinclair writes: "Souza sees himself as a priest of paint. His job is to show God the flawed face of men, and men the beauty and wrath of God. He is medieval in his insistence on the corrupt flesh of mankind and the fire of the divine. He paints to protest... It is this fierce tension between the terror of the flesh and its curious sympathy, between the fear of the Infinite and its strange still beauty on earth, that makes Souza suffer and show his suffering and his rare ease. Once seen, his work cannot be ignored, only clutched or contradicted." (Andrew Sinclair, F N Souza, London: Gallery One, 1962)

Richard Bartholomew says that Souza "deals with colour sensuously or sensually, impressing immediate and active images characteristically their own. The figure is morphosed in Souza's paintings so that it bears the burden of his message." (Rati Bartholomew, Pablo Bartholomew, Carmen Kagal and Rosalyn D'Mello eds., Richard Bartholomew: The Art Critic, New Delhi: BART, 2012, p. 85) Here, the figures are clearly the focal point of the painting even though the landscape is treated with the same degree of attention to expressive detail.

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