Important Notice

One of the reasons Indian Modernist Francis Newton Souza produced nudes, according to art historian Edwin Mullins, was to flout moral conventions. His drive behind this was two-fold. His art stood in violent opposition to the self-righteous values of the Roman Catholic Church - an environment he grew up in during his childhood in Goa. Souza had also studied art in British India, where the puritanical Victorian values borrowed and adopted by his... One of the reasons Indian Modernist Francis Newton Souza produced nudes, according to art historian Edwin Mullins, was to flout moral conventions. His drive behind this was two-fold. His art stood in violent opposition to the self-righteous values of the Roman Catholic Church - an environment he grew up in during his childhood in Goa. Souza had also studied art in British India, where the puritanical Victorian values borrowed and adopted by his fellow countrymen rankled against his aesthetic sensibilities far more. Souza had discovered in classical Indian art, particularly Khajuraho sculptures, "a tradition of erotic art incomparably more sensitive and pure" than the academic art taught in Bombay. (Edwin Mullins, F N Souza, London: Anthony Blond Ltd., 1962, p. 44)

Painted in 1949, when Souza was on the cusp of artistic recognition, the present lot demonstrates the influence of the high, taut forms of ancient sculptures that influenced the artist, particularly during his early works. "It is not surprising to see that women are the all-consuming passion in Souza's works. Unlike his ghoulish heads, Souza's sexual motifs are strangely unilateral and singular. His earliest women were iconic figures, stiffly bounded by thick black lines rather like powerful mother goddesses... His women flamboyantly display their sexuality, sometimes with their feet astride, defying convention... The fixed frontal poses of Souza's earlier nudes were charged with an energy that pulsated on the flat s urface." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "A Passion for the Human Figure," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 91-91)

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