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Lot 26

 

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“I express myself freely in paint in order to exist.
I paint what I want, what I like, what I feel.”
- F N SOUZA

F N Souza, whose oeuvre was defined by a devoutly Catholic childhood, saw the fall of man everywhere around him. Speaking of the degeneracy of an age that would not recognise true divine compassion the artist wrote, “And if God sends his son again you will have to break him in his very bones so that He will not... “I express myself freely in paint in order to exist.
I paint what I want, what I like, what I feel.”
- F N SOUZA

F N Souza, whose oeuvre was defined by a devoutly Catholic childhood, saw the fall of man everywhere around him. Speaking of the degeneracy of an age that would not recognise true divine compassion the artist wrote, “And if God sends his son again you will have to break him in his very bones so that He will not rise again… and you up there on the top floor in a single furnished room, smoking, standing at the window, expressionless city man that you are, your suffering is far more complex than the obviously simple tortured expression of one crowned with thorns, and impaled with nails.” (F N Souza, Words and Lines, New Delhi: Nitin Bhayana Publishing, p. 29 accessed via srimatilal. com) His native pessimism was intensified by a personally turbulent decade-the 1960s- during which this lot was made.

A sense of doom pervades his landscapes and cityscapes like the present lot. Following the invention of the atomic bomb, the looming threat of nuclear destruction became a persistent theme in Souza’s works. Noting the “cataclysmic force” of Souza’s cityscapes, art critic Yashodhara Dalmia breaks down how Souza’s pictorial language during the time of making this work evokes the overbearing feeling of humanity’s impending doom. “Most of his cityscapes following, at first, a simple rectilinear structure, which later, in the 1960s, gives way to an apocalyptic vision. The tumbling houses in their frenzied movement are also symbolic of all things falling apart, of the very root of things being shaken, of a world of the holocaust and thalidomide babies. The swirling and whirling trees… are those of nature gone awry, of a demonic energy behind the appearance of things.” (“A Passion for the Human Figure: Francis Newton Souza”, Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 93) In doing so, Souza exposes the ugliness to which the human endeavour seems to often lead.

Though this work veers towards the abstract, the image is never fully eliminated. Souza applies thick layers of paint with powerful strokes to create a vivid scene of destruction imbued with his trademark sense of frenetic chaos. The houses and trees agitate away from each other without adhering to any rule of civil architecture, as if blown into the air by a great force. The urgent strokes exemplify why Souza has sometimes been called an action painter by art critics. They reveal his intimate and often charged relationship with the canvas. The artist said that the potency of his act of creation allows for the impassioned interaction between creator and created to be recorded in the art itself. “When I begin to paint, I am wrapped in myself, rapt; unaware of chromium cars and decollete debutantes, wrapped like a foetus in the womb, only aware that each painting for me is either a milestone or a tombstone… I do not unwrap myself when I paint. I unwrap myself when I write. When I press a tube, I coil. Every brush stroke makes me recoil like a snake struck with a stick. I hate the smell of paint. Painting for me is not beautiful. It is as ugly as a reptile. I attack it. It coils and recoils making fascinating patterns.” (Souza, p. 10)

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