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“Today my art rings with an apocalyptic message; with holocaust, thalidomide and the vision that man’s own inventive evil may transform him into a monster.” - F N SOUZA

F N Souza relocated to New York from London in 1967, ushering in a new era in his artistic career. While starting afresh in a foreign country presented its challenges, Souza found liberation in the novelty of anonymity and used it as an opportunity to push the... “Today my art rings with an apocalyptic message; with holocaust, thalidomide and the vision that man’s own inventive evil may transform him into a monster.” - F N SOUZA

F N Souza relocated to New York from London in 1967, ushering in a new era in his artistic career. While starting afresh in a foreign country presented its challenges, Souza found liberation in the novelty of anonymity and used it as an opportunity to push the boundaries of his practice. He experimented with new mediums and techniques perhaps influenced by the graffiti and street art subcultures in New York, as well as artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol. The Man From After comes from this critical point in Souza’s career and features everal potent elements from across his oeuvre.

A human figure with a markedly distorted face looms at the foreground of the painting. Such distortions were typical of his figurative works from the 1940s onwards. “I have created a new kind of face… As you know, Picasso redrew the human face and they were magnificent. But I have drawn the physiognomy way beyond Picasso, in completely new terms. And I am still a figurative painter... When you examine the face, the morphology, I am the only artist who has taken it a step further.” (Artist quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 94) The distorted visages of Souza’s subjects underwent gradual transformations in style starting with the cross-hatching technique that became the hallmark of his earlier works to featuring loops, whorls, squiggles and tubular formations as can be seen in the present lot.

These grotesque figures are the most effective manifestations of his deep interest in characterisation, self-deprecation and the human condition. Offering insight into his personal life as well as his beliefs, they served as channels for the artist’s scathing social commentary, frequently centred on the dual issues of sex and religion, pleasure and suffering, which absorbed him all through his career.

Framing the human figure, which is rendered in the present lot using spray paint - a medium Souza explored in the late 1960s - is the artist’s iconic thick black line. The line, which would emerge over the decades as a powerful recurring element in his pictorial vocabulary, was perhaps inspired by the work of Chaim Soutine and Georges Rouault, or by the stained-glass windows of the churches Souza had visited as a child in Goa. As can be seen in the present lot Souza’s line reflected his confident handling of structure, serving “to outline, encase and define an image; serving also to provide tonal variations... and to give the painting a structural and surface unity.” (Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 1978, pp. 56-57)

In the background of the present lot, separated by a vast expanse is a cityscape - frenzied and foreboding as some of his most powerful landscapes were. Outlined boldly in red, a turbulent cluster of buildings tumble over one another, an image that is “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)

Looking at Souza’s body of figurative works and landscapes together, Kapur notes “his cityscapes... are the habitation of his frenzied figures and both can be interpreted as belonging to the nuclear age which threatens to bring global destruction.” (Kapur, p. 30). Rich with his critique of human hypocrisy and decadence, these are some of the most compelling works in his oeuvre.

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