Important Notice

"I express myself freely in paint in order to exist." - F N SOUZA

Born and brought up in a Roman-Catholic family in Goa, F N Souza had a complex relationship with Christianity. While he struggled to find an unquestioning faith in religion or its practitioners, he was unswerving in his fascination for the religious iconography that played a key role in developing his artistic vocabulary. "The Roman Catholic Church had a tremendous... "I express myself freely in paint in order to exist." - F N SOUZA

Born and brought up in a Roman-Catholic family in Goa, F N Souza had a complex relationship with Christianity. While he struggled to find an unquestioning faith in religion or its practitioners, he was unswerving in his fascination for the religious iconography that played a key role in developing his artistic vocabulary. "The Roman Catholic Church had a tremendous influence over me, not its dogmas but its grand architecture and the splendour of its services. The priest, dressed in richly embroidered vestments, each of his garments from the biretta to the chasuble symbolising the accoutrement of Christ's passion. These wooden saints painted with gold and bright colours staring vacantly out of their niches. The smell of incense. And the enormous Crucifix with the impaled image of a Man supposed to be the Son of God, scourged and dripping, with matted hair tangled in plaited thorns." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "A Passion for the Human Figure," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 81)

His early figurative works set the precedent for a unique style - one that peeled away the appearance and instead revealed his subjects' character, personality, and even their obsessions and depravations. "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." (Dalmia, p. 80)

Souza's artistic representations of the human figure thus reflect his lifelong interest in characterisation, self-deprecation, and the human condition. This is evident through his "dextrous use of line" that helped "evolve a unique visual language," his trademark crosshatching technique that later progressed to loops and whorls, tubular structures, and systematic distortion, as noted in the present lot. (Aziz Kurtha, Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 2006, p. 134)

Painted during a period where Souza produced some of his best works, Untitled (Priest at Altar) sees him using highly expressionistic and gestural brushstrokes to highlight the priest in his religious garb standing in front of an altar. Souza ensures his features remain undefinable, thus stripping the priest of a clear identity and making him represent all clergy members espousing similar religious sermons.

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