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Lot 13

 

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“There are times when I wander in the streets late at night or in the early hours of the morning. I avoid being seen at such times because I get beside myself like a lunatic searching for Light, a Glimpse, a fleeting Revelation, a moment of Inspiration, Light, Light... in vain, in vain...” - F N SOUZA

In a review of one of F N Souza’s shows in London in 1955, John Berger of the New Statesman wrote, “He straddles several... “There are times when I wander in the streets late at night or in the early hours of the morning. I avoid being seen at such times because I get beside myself like a lunatic searching for Light, a Glimpse, a fleeting Revelation, a moment of Inspiration, Light, Light... in vain, in vain...” - F N SOUZA

In a review of one of F N Souza’s shows in London in 1955, John Berger of the New Statesman wrote, “He straddles several traditions, but serves none.” This oft-quoted statement perfectly encapsulates the provocative and powerful art of one of India’s greatest Modernists.

Souza relocated to London in 1949, in pursuit of better artistic opportunities and a more liberal audience. It would turn out to be one of the most defining moves of his artistic career. London, however, was a very different place than Souza had expected. Galleries were uninterested in exhibiting Indian artists, and there was little value assigned to painting. It didn’t help that Souza’s violent and provocative art - whenever it was exhibited - horrified critics and viewers.

“Once he and a friend carried an enormous picture from North Kensington where he lived to Bond Street..., because a gallery had expressed a slight interest in his work; only to have it rejected, and then to carry it all the way back to North Kensington.” (Edwin Mullins, “An Introduction by Edwin Mullins”, Souza, London: Anthony Blond Ltd.,1962, p. 19) Defeated, Souza was on the verge of returning to India by 1954, but a one-man exhibition at Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris later that year postponed that journey.

Yet, it was his writing, and not his art, that first brought Souza notice, and catapulted his eventual meteoric rise to success. That same year, Souza sent an autobiographical essay on his life in Goa titled “Nirvana of a Maggot” to Stephen Spender, editor of the recently founded literary magazine Encounter. Impressed by his writing, Spender published it the following year (1955). Around the same time, Souza met Victor Musgrave, the owner of a tiny gallery in Litchfield Street, the original Gallery One. “Musgrave asked to see his work, took a few pieces - which he sold - and then offered him a one-man exhibition in February 1955. This exhibition coincided with the publication of Nirvana, in Encounter, and made Souza’s name more or less overnight.” (Mullins, p. 25) What followed was a highly lucrative period that is generally considered to be the apex of Souza’s career.

The present lot was painted in 1962, by which time Souza had already become a significant presence in London’s art circles. “For almost ten years, from 1956 to 1966, he dominated the British art scene, showing his work and selling regularly. He was written about extensively and received praise from critics such as John Berger, Edwin Mullins and David Sylvester, to name a few.” (Rasheed Araeen ed., The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain, London: South Bank Centre, 1989, p. 23)

During this period, Souza travelled across Europe and developed what has come to be his signature style - an unrestrained format of painting that fused motifs and artistic elements from various schools including Renaissance and Romanesque art, Western modernism, African tribal art as well as classical Indian art. Although his most celebrated works from this period included figurative compositions that were often erotically charged or grotesque, he also produced a large body of landscapes that were inspired by Europe’s spirited and historic cities.

The present lot depicts a bleak and rather haunting cityscape, dominated by dark and sombre tones. Souza began to create considerably more landscapes following his move to England, with London in particular having served as a sort of testing ground as well as a recurring subject. Often desolate, foreboding, raw and violent, these landscapes reflect the obscurity, dislocation and turmoil that marked these early years in the country.

While a darkness sweeps through the present lot, the time of day or night portrayed remains indecipherable. The pale and washed out skies as well as the shadows engulfing the buildings make it equally likely for this to be early dawn or dusk. The network of angular buildings, though markedly less distorted than many of Souza’s other landscapes from this period, still exude a sense of turbulence. Arranged in clusters, they are rendered using his feverish brushstrokes and framed by his thick black lines, creating a deceptively still yet highly volatile environment that does an effective job of reflecting the impoverishment of England, where Souza was operating from at this time.

Jagdish Swaminathan describes Souza’s cityscapes as “singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions”. They are the “congealed visions of a mysterious world. Whether standing solidly in enamelled petrifaction or delineated in thin colour with calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors.” (J Swaminathan, “Souza’s Exhibition”, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 31)

By the time he painted the present lot, Souza’s work had featured in many prestigious galleries in the UK, as well as across Europe. He had held solo shows at Gallery One, London in 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959 and 1960, as well as at Galerie Creuze in 1954. He had also been at the Venice Biennale in 1954. By the 1960s, his paintings had made their way into the collection of the Contemporary Art Society, and by 1963, they had appeared in venues including the Tate, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Bradford Museum, and Castle Museum, Norwich. In keeping with his extraordinary career successes during this decade, two of his works were also acquired by the Tate in 1964.

Art historian Eddie Chambers writes, “If ever a mid twentieth-century immigrant artist symbolised an impulse towards the universal languages of art that were simultaneously grounded in individual particularities of identity, it was Souza. His paintings were characterised by an astonishingly liberated approach to both execution and subject matter” (Eddie Chambers, Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s, London: I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2014, online)

The present lot was part of a solo exhibition of Souza’s works at the Adler Fielding Galleries in Johannesburg in 1964. The exhibition, which feature 31 of Souza’s paintings and 25 drawings, was the first of three held as part of a promising partnership with the New Grosvenor Gallery in London. The partnership also included exchange exhibitions wherein South African paintings, sourced by Grosvenor founder Eric Estorick during his six-monthlong stay in South Africa, would be displayed in London. Estorick desired for the Grosvenor to be a “Gallery of Living Art,” one that would “illustrate the major ideas and movements of the century,” and their focus on Souza stemmed from this initiative. (Souza, Johannesburg: Adler Fielding Galleries, 1964). The exhibition catalogue (see reference image) states, “Souza’s works are certainly for the connoisseur and collector, and doubtless all our patrons will be interested in these tremendously fine and virile paintings.” (Souza)

Despite his success in London, Souza still faced periods of struggle, and left for New York by 1967 to further advance his career. The present lot is an important painting from this crucial phase in Souza’s career and reflects not just the prevalent anxiety and sombre atmosphere of post-war Europe, but also indicates his inner angst and turbulence. Even in its bleak stillness, it evokes “an apocalyptic vision” or a “virtual prediction of the end of the world” as did many of his landscapes from the time. “It was evident that a deep gloom underlay the brazen, audacious exterior of Souza.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, Souza in London, New Delhi: British Council, 2004, p. 13)

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