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Lot 46

 

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"Renaissance painters painted men and women making them look like angels. I paint for angels, to show them what men and women really look like." - F N SOUZA

F N Souza's early figurative, "futuristic" works of the 1950s set the precedent for a unique style that went beyond outward appearances to reveal and critique characters, personalities and depravations. The present lot was painted during a defining period for the artist,... "Renaissance painters painted men and women making them look like angels. I paint for angels, to show them what men and women really look like." - F N SOUZA

F N Souza's early figurative, "futuristic" works of the 1950s set the precedent for a unique style that went beyond outward appearances to reveal and critique characters, personalities and depravations. The present lot was painted during a defining period for the artist, whose work had finally gained recognition in London's art circles following the publication of his autobiographical essay "Nirvana of a Maggot" and his subsequent solo show at Victor Musgrave's Gallery One in February 1955. "Many of the tendencies that became distinct in Souza's later years could be detected in these early works. The thick, bounding line, the distortion of the figure and the dislocation of facial characteristics had already begun to mark his style." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "A Passion for the Human Figure," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 80)

With distorted features on scarred faces - which were at times an allusion to the scars he retained from contracting smallpox as a child - Souza's paintings of 'Heads' had become a predominant theme in his body of work from the 1940s onwards. In the same year that the present lot was painted, Andrew Forge observed that, "Somewhere behind any serious portrait painting there is a wish to gain command of a person... But in Souza you can see the real thing operating, you can see him closing in on his images as though they could save his life, or backing away from them as though they could kill him. Souza himself has said that he has made of his art 'a metabolism. I express myself freely in paint in order to exist.'" ("Round the London Galleries," The Listener, 28 November 1957)

The 'Heads' represented both a sense of selfdeprecation and a critique of human society, offering a channel for the artist's observations and social commentary, and even scathing critiques of the soulless clergy and gentry. According to British writer and critic Edwin Mullins, who wrote a seminal monograph on the artist in 1962, "...because his images are clearly intended to be human, one is compelled to ask why his faces have eyes high up in the forehead, or else scattered in profusion all over the face; why he paints mouths that stretch like hair combs across the face, and limbs that branch out like thistles. Souza's imagery is not a surrealist vision - a selfconscious aesthetic shock - so much as a spontaneous re- creation of the world as he has seen it, distilled in the mind by a host of private experiences and associations." (Edwin Mullins, Souza, London: Anthony Blond Ltd., 1962, p. 39)

HAROLD KOVNER

In 1956, Souza found his first major patron, the wealthy American collector and hospital owner Harold Kovner, through a gallery in Paris. Having arrived from New York looking for new artists, Kovner went to Gallery Iris Clert, but was unimpressed by their collection of abstracts. The eponymous gallery owner possessed several paintings by Souza, and showed some of these works to Kovner with some reluctance. Kovner jumped. Within 24 hours he had met Souza, given him money, taken away some pictures, made arrangements for the future, and was flying back to New York. The arrangement was a perfectly simple one. Souza was to keep him supplied with pictures every few months - entirely of the artist's choosing - and in return Kovner would keep him supplied with money. (Edwin Mullins, F N Souza, London: Anthony Blond Ltd., 1962, p. 26)

The duration of this patronage, which lasted four years, was creatively and artistically, the most energising period of Souza's career. Kovner's regular stipend relieved Souza of financial troubles, allowing him more freedom to paint than ever before. Kovner's support during this critical period was a time of unprecedented inventiveness for the artist. The present lot was part of Kovner's collection of Souza paintings.

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