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Lot 47

 

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1956, the year of this painting, was a seminal one for Souza, following his successful artistic and literary debut in London the previous year. His first solo show at Gallery One won critical acclaim, as did his first publication, the semi-autobiographical essay, “Nirvana of a Maggot”. Riding the crest of this wave of critical and commercial success, which alleviated his hardship and struggle, Souza`s paintings and drawings of the mid and late... 1956, the year of this painting, was a seminal one for Souza, following his successful artistic and literary debut in London the previous year. His first solo show at Gallery One won critical acclaim, as did his first publication, the semi-autobiographical essay, “Nirvana of a Maggot”. Riding the crest of this wave of critical and commercial success, which alleviated his hardship and struggle, Souza`s paintings and drawings of the mid and late 1950s comprise some of his best works.

Of these works, Souza’s portraits of the "tortured saints" he recalls from his early years in Goa are legendary. Portraying figures like St. Peter, St. Sebastian and John the Baptist, these paintings not only offer us insight into the artist’s life, but are also a significant source of his social and religious commentary. Here, the artist splinters the head of a saint, already pierced by the arrows of his sacrifice and suffering, into its component planes, each separated from the other by thick black lines. However, with his mask-like countenance and the vacant expression in his characteristically high-set eyes, this saint is far from a beatific martyr. In this modern-day icon, Souza forsakes ecclesiastic grandeur to reveal instead the truth that lies beneath its ornamental robes; similarly, the benevolence associated with religious martyrdom is transformed into something more closely resembling the ferocity of a wounded animal. Explaining the inversions of these mocking images Souza stated, "Renaissance painters painted men and women making them look like angels… I paint for angels, to show them what men and women really look like" (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond, London, 1962, p. 82).

"The one continuing theme Souza explores, in the coming years, is the theme of hypocrisy and the Church, in so far as it symbolises absolute authority and camouflages with subtle cunning the hypocrisies of the elite… The recurring portraits of priests, prophets, cardinals, and Popes are therefore to be taken literally for what they are but also symbolically as representatives of institutions and authority, only more treacherous in that they claim divine sanction… It is this double connotation of fact and symbol and his interlocked feelings of secret fascination and objective disgust which make Souza`s handling of religious figures so unique" (Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1978, p. 20).

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