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Lot 35

 

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"F N Souza’s art is desperately and continually striving to dovetail the poles of suffering and joy; to accept and adjust the ugliness and the pain of life, with the beauty and the ecstasy of love- of human love- which is divine.” (Mervyn Levy, “The Human and The Divine”, The Studio, Volume 167, No. 852, London: Prism Publications, 1964, p. 139)

F N Souza’s devotion to the image blossomed out of his frenzied passion to communicate... "F N Souza’s art is desperately and continually striving to dovetail the poles of suffering and joy; to accept and adjust the ugliness and the pain of life, with the beauty and the ecstasy of love- of human love- which is divine.” (Mervyn Levy, “The Human and The Divine”, The Studio, Volume 167, No. 852, London: Prism Publications, 1964, p. 139)

F N Souza’s devotion to the image blossomed out of his frenzied passion to communicate his experiences and emotions, resulting in an artistic language that was largely dictated by gnarled figures and agile draughtsmanship. His rebuttal of hypocrisy, modern misery and degradation of humanity at large found a release in impulsive pictorial forms that came to him out of this urgency to communicate. Often referred to as a ‘figurative action painter’, the artist worked incessantly early in his career, in intense bursts of inspiration, creating as many as a dozen paintings or drawings in a single day.

The sub-theme of landscape made for an integral part of Souza’s artistic arsenal, serving as some of the most truthful and captivating records of the artist’s meditations and life. His obscure bewilderment of nature locates itself in watercolour paintings of Goan landscapes in the 1940s which highlight a period of experimentation, along with writings such as Nirvana of the Maggot, an autobiographical essay, where he fondly reminisces bathing in a lake and describes the flora and fauna of his native Goa. These incipient small-format watercolours, in tandem with his developing style, grew into enigmatic cityscapes that depicted European landscapes instilled with his innate scepticism about human nature.

Building in Trafalgar Square, bathed in a dim blue sky, is one such enigmatic and mysterious cityscape which chronicles the dislocation, grimness, and gloom that loomed over post-war Britain. Denying the formal exactness of realistic paintings for a pictorial language darting with energy and emotion, Souza delineates this work in his landmark style that aptly preserved the inspired moment in impasto and shrieking bold lines.

Interpreting Souza’s landscapes as being driven by a cataclysmic force which wreaks havoc, scholar Yashodhara Dalmia writes, “Most of these 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...of nature gone awry, of a demonic force behind the appearance of things.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 93)

The present lot was executed in 1955, the year that was witness to the most iconic events of Souza’s career leading up to his artistic apogee. In 1949 he left Indian shores for London, seeking better patronage but was met with tough luck since galleries at that time did not exhibit Indian artists. Left to bite the bullet, Souza oscillated between various galleries only to hear that he was ‘not good enough’. “Once he and a friend carried an enormous picture from North Kensington where he lived to Bond Street..., because a gallery had expressed a slight interest in his work; only to have it rejected, and then to carry it all the way back to North Kensington.” (Edwin Mullins, “An Introduction by Edwin Mullins”, Souza, London: Anthony Blond Ltd.,1962, p. 19) Defeated, Souza was on the verge of returning to India by 1954, but a one-man exhibition at Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris later that year postponed that journey.

It was only in 1955 that Stephen Spender, editor of a literary magazine Encounter, published his much-lauded essay Nirvana of a Maggot which catapulted Souza into the Western art circles. Coeval with the publication, he met Victor Musgrave, owner of Gallery One, who offered him a solo exhibition in February 1955. The show did exceptionally well, piquing the attention of critics such as John Berger. Spender also introduced him to Peter Watson who later showed his works alongside masters such as Francis Bacon, Sutherland, Moore and others. “Souza held five one-man exhibitions at Gallery One, the fifth and most impressive one in 1961...Souza’s paintings between the periods 1955 to 1963 are now among the most sought after.” (Kishore Singh ed., Continuum: Progressive Artists’ Group, New Delhi: DAG, 2011, p. 317)

The current lot is testament to the artist’s ingenuity as a painter of the mind rather than the eye. Souza relied on his imagination and spontaneity to compose his pictures, not required to look at things in daylight. He declares, “I often paint my landscapes from photographs. Or rather I begin to paint them from photographs. In the end they are mostly collective images of many places I’ve known all rolled into one. Bits of Bombay, a street in Barcelona, a tree in Rome. And I often introduce into my composite landscapes, the livid green of the monsoons of Goa.” (Artist quoted in “The Human and The Divine”, p. 135)

An image culled out of intense cerebral inspiration and fervour, Building in Trafalgar Square is a composition dense with colours that seem to be stimulated by stained glass windows of Goa as well as European churches. Souza’s townscapes are the “congealed visions of a mysterious world. Whether standing solidly in enamelled petrifaction or delineated in thin colour with calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors.” (J Swaminathan, “Souza’s Exhibition”, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 31)

Thus, Souza’s landscapes are essential, universal, and relevant even today, attest the collective experience of the time, capturing the angst laden forties in London that gave rise to a generation of artists who contemplated and expressed their anguish about the human condition. They are not celebrations of nature nor attempts to capture the fleeting sunset but are infallible expressions and reflections on reality through painting with an impeccable sense of colour, making for his most potent and sought after works from the decade.

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