Important Notice

Lot 68

 

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After he was expelled from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay in 1945, F.N. Souza spent his free time “…studying in libraries, where he discovered for the first time illustrations of classical Indian art and of modern European painting. These were a revelation… Souza made a passionate study of Indian art, and was particularly moved by the South Indian bronzes – with their symbolism and their astonishing feeling for movement – and by the... After he was expelled from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay in 1945, F.N. Souza spent his free time “…studying in libraries, where he discovered for the first time illustrations of classical Indian art and of modern European painting. These were a revelation… Souza made a passionate study of Indian art, and was particularly moved by the South Indian bronzes – with their symbolism and their astonishing feeling for movement – and by the sublimely erotic carvings on the temples of Khajuraho. Both of these made a lasting impression on him, and were largely responsible for awakening the imagination of the young painter” (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Ltd, London, 1962, p. 16). In 1948, Souza and Husain visited the India Independence exhibition at Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi together, where the classical Indian art on display, particularly the carvings and sculpture, made a lasting impression on the two artists and their work.

The present lot, a large and vivid canvas by Souza, was painted in 1949, when the artist was 24 years old, and mirrors this impact in its bold form and almost primitive simplicity. Recalling scenes from his childhood spent in the Saligaon area of Goa, then an idyllic Portuguese colony, this painting is an early marker of the artist’s talent, particularly in terms of his confident line and figuration. A picturesque tropical landscape populated by a motley cast of characters including a psychedelically coloured seated nude, and a more prosaic standing couple and child, this work is probably one of the largest and last Souza executed in this unique style and fresh palette before he left for London the same year, and began to paint with a much darker urban vision.

Speaking about the reactions that Souza’s work from this period drew, Dr. Hermann Goetz, curator of the Baroda Museum and buyer of the artist’s first painting, noted, “He has shocked many who cannot imagine a green or blue-red human body…who cannot stand a simplification intended to intensify an experience, or a distortion of proportions suggesting a sense of earthbound heaviness, ghoulish obsession, lightness or spiritualization, who cannot face the frank statement of sex which is sublimized not by suppression but by association and interplay with the experiences of the soul” (“Rebel Artist Francis Newton”, Marg, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1949).

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