Important Notice

Antonio Piedade da Cruz was born in 1895 in Velim, Salcete, part of Portuguese-ruled Goa. He was educated at the J J School of Art, Bombay, where he was mentored by then principal Gladstone Solomon and notable salon artist M V Dhurandhar. Cruz later became one of the first Asian members of the Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste, now the Universität der Künste) in Berlin where he attained status of ‘master student’... Antonio Piedade da Cruz was born in 1895 in Velim, Salcete, part of Portuguese-ruled Goa. He was educated at the J J School of Art, Bombay, where he was mentored by then principal Gladstone Solomon and notable salon artist M V Dhurandhar. Cruz later became one of the first Asian members of the Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste, now the Universität der Künste) in Berlin where he attained status of ‘master student’ (Meisterschüler) and subsequently showcased his works across Germany, Portugal, Madrid, and Paris, before returning to Bombay in 1925. His travels across Europe, post-World War I, exposed him to emerging movements such as Expressionism, Dadaism, and Surrealism, as well as critical works of artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque.

During the 1930s and 1940s, da Cruz established himself as a celebrated portrait artist and earned patronage from royalty of the Princely States and prominent members of British India, including Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir, the Maharajas of Travancore, Gwalior and Bikaner; Lord Brabourne, Governor of Bombay; Field Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode, who was Commander-in-Chief of India in the early 1930s; and Lord Mountbatten. He is also said to have played a key role in securing the site of the Brabourne Stadium in Bombay for the Cricket Club of India. He set up his practice, Cruzo Studio, at Stadium House, which became a hub for artists and writers, especially those resisting the Salazar regime in Goa.

Despite his association with high society, the artist “articulated his ideological convictions, which were firmly moored in the anti-colonial struggle, through a series of allegories of labour, poverty, and revolution... The focal figures in this idiom were Christ, Gandhi, the Buddha by allusion, as well as personifications of Labour and Revolution, and also the artist’s self, depicted as wrestling with dilemmas and anxieties, the rival claims of art and life, bourgeois sanity and bohemian precariousness.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “The Quest for Cruzo: Remembering a Bombay Artist Who Painted the Rich but Identified With the Poor,” Scroll, 24 June 2016, online) Among his notable works are portraits of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he viewed as a redeemer and depicted in a style suggestive of the paintings of saints by Pre-Raphaelite artists of 19th-century England, and images of Christ set in seemingly Indian locales.

The present lot is an exquisite example of the social and religious themes that da Cruz explored in his work, likely influenced by his upbringing in Goa. The artist’s skill as a draughtsman and his deft control of colour can be seen in his depiction of Eve as she sits behind a diaphanous cloth and holds an apple up to Adam. Though da Cruz’s work faded from public memory after his death in 1982, his oeuvre remains a vital piece of Indian art history.

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