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Lot 71

 

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Troubled by India’s poor reception of modern art and its general lack of appreciation for ‘revolutionary’ artists like himself and his contemporaries from the Progressive Artists’ Group that he co-founded in Bombay with M.F. Husain, Souza left India for England in 1949.

London, however, was not the city Souza had imagined it to be. Wracked by the shortages and destruction of the Second World War, the city could not offer much to the... Troubled by India’s poor reception of modern art and its general lack of appreciation for ‘revolutionary’ artists like himself and his contemporaries from the Progressive Artists’ Group that he co-founded in Bombay with M.F. Husain, Souza left India for England in 1949.

London, however, was not the city Souza had imagined it to be. Wracked by the shortages and destruction of the Second World War, the city could not offer much to the immigrant artist, and Souza’s initial years there were spent in wretched poverty. Most of the galleries that he approached for the six years between 1949 and 1955 turned him down, saying his work was not good enough for their shows. Responding to the question of whether London proved a ‘promised land’ for his, Souza was quick to say, “No. Whatever promises were there were in the museums. But the people, and the grimness of London, were quite horrifying. One immediately thought, “What?” These people used to rule India, you know? It was unbelievable. When I went to London, England still had rationing. It was post-war – they were still smarting from the aftermath of the war. There was rationing of utilities, curtailment in all fields, but the one thing that really was quite remarkable, as far as my destiny, is that nothing ever prevented me from painting. I continued painting through thick and thin. I never took a job for wages or salary. Even when the circumstances were meagre, they allowed for me to buy my paint, and to paint” (as quoted in “Interview with F.N. Souza – 1994”, F.N. Souza, Saffronart and Grosvenor Gallery exhibition catalogue, New York, 2008, p. 8).

With the help of a small group of friends, however, Souza struggled through the lean years to emerge triumphant in 1955, when not only was his work exhibited for the first time at Victor Musgrave’s Gallery One, but his autobiographical essay “Nirvana of a Maggot” was also published to rave reviews in Stephen Spender’s magazine Encounter.

Following these initial successes and the critical acclaim they brought Souza, Villiers in London published a compilation of his writings and drawings in 1959 (republished in a limited edition in 1997 by Nitin Bhayana Publishing, New Delhi). In addition to demonstrating his powerful prose, the publication, titled Words and Lines, shed light on the artist’s cynical understanding of human nature, and as a result, on the genesis of his extensive body of work.

The following five lots, drawings created between 1951 and 1957 that have been published in Words and Lines, are a representative cross-section of Souza’s oeuvre, encompassing the dual issues of sex and religion, pleasure and suffering, which absorbed the artist, particularly during his time in London. In addition, these works offer insight into the frank and agile draughtsmanship that Souza perfected during this period, and that won him acclaim with critics and collectors world over.

One of the drawings, lot 15, is offered along with an original Villiers first edition of Words and Lines, numbered 28 out of a limited edition of 1000 and signed by the artist.

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