Important Notice

"Why should I be sparse and parsimonious when not only this world but worlds in space are open to me? I have everything to use at my disposal." - F N SOUZA

F N Souza's landscapes offer an insight into his personal journeys, as well as clues to broader socio-political events in the places that he depicts. Unlike the cityscapes that Souza painted during the war and through the post-war period in the 1960s - which often featured... "Why should I be sparse and parsimonious when not only this world but worlds in space are open to me? I have everything to use at my disposal." - F N SOUZA

F N Souza's landscapes offer an insight into his personal journeys, as well as clues to broader socio-political events in the places that he depicts. Unlike the cityscapes that Souza painted during the war and through the post-war period in the 1960s - which often featured an apocalyptic urgency and a darker palette - the present lot was painted a few years after his move to New York from London, and the vivid colours of this landscape are in sharp contrast to his earlier sombre scenes.

"Souza can represent the essence of nature in a small, spontaneously assembled still-life or suggest in an equally small landscape the meaning of place and time." (Richard Bartholomew quoted in Rati Bartholomew, Pablo Bartholomew, Carmen Kagal and Rosalyn D'Mello eds., Richard Bartholomew: The Art Critic, Noida: BART, 2012, p. 548) In the present lot, the fragmented jumble of what seem to be houses and buildings appear almost like a mosaic, indicative of the increasingly congested yet vibrant nature of urban life.

In 1989, Souza spoke about these earlier works and the idiom of landscapes developed by Indian artists at the time. "We can now look back and be surprised at how those of us from the Progressive Artists' Group... came into our own individual styles; our landscapes were not only very different from those of British painters like Turner and Constable, we were, although we were very modern, different from the French impressionists. We were bold and full of fire. Our landscapes were full of brilliant colours!" (Artist quoted in "Red Trees, Black Skies," The Times of India, 4 June 1989, p. 4)

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