Important Notice

“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

Unlike some of his contemporaries, F N Souza remained a primarily figurative artist for the length of his career. Visual art for Souza was a communicative art and he found figuration to be a more effective vehicle than abstraction. “I am a documentary painter of our time, so... “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

Unlike some of his contemporaries, F N Souza remained a primarily figurative artist for the length of his career. Visual art for Souza was a communicative art and he found figuration to be a more effective vehicle than abstraction. “I am a documentary painter of our time, so I must employ positive imagery.” (F N Souza quoted in Mervyn Levy, “F.N. Souza: The Human and the Divine”, The Studio Volume 167 Number 852, London: Prism Publications Ltd., April 1964, p. 139)

Having cut his teeth as a student draughtsman on figurative art, he was declared “one of the few important living artists who still holds faith with this language of imagery” by British art critic Edwin Mullins in his 1962 monograph on the artist (Edwin Mullins, Souza, London: Anthony Blond Ltd., 1962, p. 36). Indeed, Nevile Wallis described Souza as “a ferocious satirist of Western man and a draughtsman of concentrated power.” (Nevile Wallis, “In Holland Park”, The Observer, 2 June 1957)

The Family (1984) -man, woman and child-is a large acrylic work on canvas in a semi-realist, part-caricature vein that depicts a biracial couple and their mixed-race son. The mother is “white” or pink, the father brown and their little son literally a mix of brown and pink. Their oversized almond eyes are awake and alert. And yet, there is a sense of the comic twist in style and rendering bringing lightness to the lofty and serious topics of multiculturalism, race and racism. At the time of making this work, Souza was in the early grips of Redmonism-the profound theory of Nature, the Universe and Mankind-which led him to explore new counterparts in his image making. He expounded upon the subject in his book The White Flag Revolution in 1982. While many in 1984 shuddered with relief that the “Big Brother” of Orwell’s dystopian novel had not actually arrived, Souza espoused his theory of Prakriti i.e. “Nature is the Sole Principle.”

The family depicted in this work symbolises all that is positive in the era of the multiracial family living in a multicultural society. One finally endorsed, rather than despised, by the establishment and worlds apart from the Great Britain Souza had entered in 1949 and subsequently, the America of 1967 where he was treated as an acceptable emissary of a primitive culture.

The three figures are drawn in Souza’s trademark bold, fluid lines that art critic Geeta Kapur has called “the most developed part of Souza’s vocabulary.” (“Francis Newton Souza: Devil in the Flash”, Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1978, p. 34) She traces the lineage of his linemanship to Picasso’s prominent lines. Picasso, who co-founded the Cubist movement, had a profound influence on Souza’s practice which also expressed itself in his distortion of the human form and intense palette. Kapur expounds, “Whether it is ornamental or abrupt, lyric or diabolic, Souza’s line is derived from Picasso; from Picasso’s unmatched virtuosity in delineating an object or figure with the sheer element of line. One has only to compare Souza to his contemporary figurative Expressionists to realize how much freer he is in the simultaneous manipulation of mind and hand and how much more tough and incisive.” (Kapur, p. 34) Speaking of the centrality of the line to his images, Souza has said, “It’s good to remember Euclid: a point has no length or breadth but has a position. A line is made up of a number of points. A number of lines make a plane. A number of planes make a solid. This geometric formula underlines the draftsmanship of the greatest of artists...” (F N Souza quoted in “Idiom and Expression”, Aziz Kurtha, Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2006, p. 98)

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