Important Notice

Francis Newton Souza - An Iconic Masterpiece

Man and Woman Laughing shows one of Souza's main preoccupations-to unveil the hypocrisy of the society he inhabited, and expose the "perverted pantomime of human relationships" through his furious brushwork and pictorial imagery. "Souza is contemptuous of those bonds that hold together individuals into a family and a larger social unit of the community. His beings are... Francis Newton Souza - An Iconic Masterpiece

Man and Woman Laughing shows one of Souza's main preoccupations-to unveil the hypocrisy of the society he inhabited, and expose the "perverted pantomime of human relationships" through his furious brushwork and pictorial imagery. "Souza is contemptuous of those bonds that hold together individuals into a family and a larger social unit of the community. His beings are predators, each suspicious and wary of the other." (E. Alkazi, "Souza's Seasons in Hell", Art Heritage, Season 1986-87, New Delhi, p. 74)Some understanding of Souza's life can provide insight into his journey as an artist and how he came to be at a point of such cynicism about society.

In a review of one of Souza's shows in London in 1955, John Berger of the New Statesman wrote, "He straddles several traditions, but serves none." An oft quoted line, it perfectly encapsulates the provocative and powerful art of one of India's greatest Modernists.

In the coastal village of Saligao, Goa, Francis Newton Souza-a "ricketty child" as he called himself-was born in a strict Portuguese Catholic community. Souza's family was extremely God-fearing and devoted to the Church, an atmosphere brought on by the loss of Souza's father, followed by a near death experience with small pox that the artist suffered at the age of five. Although Souza rebelled against this climate of religiosity, it was also where he first discovered images and image-making.

Souza's spirit of rebellion manifested throughout his youth, particularly after he moved to Bombay. A series of expulsions from various institutes followed: from the Jesuit school, where he was thrown out for drawing on lavatory walls, to the J.J. School of Art, where his political ideologies caused a break with the school authorities.

While his years in Bombay were brief, they led to an historic event in Indian art history. In July 1947, Souza, along with fellow artists K.H. Ara, S.H. Raza and M.F. Husain, formed the Progressive Artists' Group. They were the forerunners of a new vision of Modern art that "amalgamated internationalism with the experience of being rooted in India," (Yashodhara Dalmia, Souza in London, Queen's Gallery, British Council, New Delhi, Feb. 2004, p.16). The group disbanded after Souza's departure to London two years later, but their nascent collaboration was a turning point in Indian art.

Souza's early years in London were difficult and he was often close to impoverishment. From 1949, when he departed Bombay, to 1955, when he finally began to receive recognition for his art, Souza suffered many hardships. The London galleries weren't interested in his work: "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, Anthony Blond Ltd., 1962, p. 19)

During these six years, Souza, a talented writer, sustained himself on journalistic work, and the occasional patronage of men like Krishna Menon, the then Indian High Commissioner in London, who hired him to paint a series of murals for the Indian Students' Bureau in 1950. For the most part, Souza survived because of the fraternity of artists in London, and the unending support of his wife Maria Figuerado, who patiently tolerated his bouts of drinking-a habit that would eventually pose a serious problem for the artist.

London, itself, was a very different place than Souza had expected. Galleries were uninterested in exhibiting Indian artists, and there was little value assigned to painting. It didn't help that Souza's violent and provocative art-whenever it was exhibited-horrified critics and viewers. Defeated, Souza was on the verge of returning to India in 1954, when a visit by a Paris dealer and a subsequent one-man exhibition later that year, postponed that journey.

Yet, it was his writing, and not his art, that first brought Souza notice, and catapulted his eventual meteoric rise to success. That same year, Souza sent an autobiographical essay about Goa titled "Nirvana of a Maggot" to Stephen Spender, editor of the recently founded literary magazine Encounter, Impressed by his writing, Spender published it the following year. Around the same time, Souza met Victor Musgrave, owner of a tiny gallery in Litchfield Street, the original Gallery One. "Musgrave asked to see his work, took a few pieces-which he sold-and then offered him a one-man exhibition in February 1955. This exhibition coincided with the publication of Nirvana, in Encounter, and made Souza's name more or less overnight." (Mullins, p. 25)

These two events in Souza's life accompanied a third significant one. In 1956, Souza found his first major patron, the wealthy American collector Harold Kovner, through a gallery in Paris. Having arrived from New York "to find a new artist he could take up", Kovner went to Gallery Iris Clert, and was unimpressed by their collection of abstracts. With some reluctance, the eponymous gallery owner showed him several paintings by Souza. "Kovner jumped. Within 24 hours he had met Souza, given him money, taken away some pictures, made arrangements for the future, and was flying back to New York. The arrangement was a perfectly simple one. Souza was to keep him supplied with pictures every few months-entirely of the artist's choosing-and in return Kovner would keep him supplied with money." (Mullins, p. 26)

The duration of this patronage-which lasted four years-were creatively and artistically, the most energizing years of Souza's career. Kovner's regular stipend relieved Souza of financial troubles, allowing him more freedom to paint than ever before. The tail-end of the '50s was to manifest into a period of unprecedented inventiveness for the artist.

Souza's art, is remarkable for "his masterly use of the line. Not only did it form the sinews of his work but it existed primarily as an independent expressive means." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "The Underbelly of Existence", The Demonic Line, An Exhibition of Drawings, 1940 - 1964 by F.N. Souza, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2001, p. 3).

During his early years in Bombay, immediately after his expulsion from the J.J. School of Art, Souza had taken to studying in libraries, where he came across illustrations of classical Indian art and of modern European painting-two artistic traditions completely cast aside in favour of the lacklustre academic realism that the art school espoused. He was particularly moved by South Indian bronzes and the high relief carvings on the Khajuraho temples. "The emphasis on definitive line to trace the twist and movement of the human body; the impersonal, ritual treatment of sensuality; the tendency to stylize objects so that they become stripped of incidental detail; and the intuitive understanding of how to treat a virtually flat surface in order to create the effect, not of depth, but of movement; these are all important components in Souza's paintings and they stem more or less directly from classical Indian art." (Mullins, p. 38)

At the same time, Souza was inspired by Spanish Romanesque art, and the works of Pablo Picasso from the '30s and '40s. Of the former, there were definite traces in Souza's paintings, in the way he implemented the iconic stance, frontal position and the stiff demeanour of his figurative subjects. Souza's aesthetics, however, led him to subvert all these traditions. Mainly evident in his religious paintings, but not limited to them, Souza's figures were an apotheosis of the grotesque.

The present lot, Man and Woman Laughing, was exhibited at Souza's 1957 show at Gallery One, relocated at D'Arblay Street in Soho, London. It was one of the 200 paintings that Kovner came to own by the end of their partnership and is today one of the most important works in the collection. By this time, "Souza seemed to have reached a heightened awareness about the achievements and drawbacks of the society he was amidst." (Yashodhara Dalmia, Souza in London, Queen's Gallery, British Council, New Delhi, Feb. 2004, p. 8)

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