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Lot 30

 

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After he was expelled from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay in 1945, F.N. Souza spent his free time "…studying in libraries, where he discovered for the first time illustrations of classical Indian art and of modern European painting. These were a revelation… Souza made a passionate study of Indian art, and was particularly moved by the South Indian bronzes - with their symbolism and their astonishing feeling for movement - and by the... After he was expelled from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay in 1945, F.N. Souza spent his free time "…studying in libraries, where he discovered for the first time illustrations of classical Indian art and of modern European painting. These were a revelation… Souza made a passionate study of Indian art, and was particularly moved by the South Indian bronzes - with their symbolism and their astonishing feeling for movement - and by the sublimely erotic carvings on the temples of Khajuraho. Both of these made a lasting impression on him, and were largely responsible for awakening the imagination of the young painter" (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Ltd, London, 1962, p. 16). In 1948, just before Souza left for England, he travelled with Husain to Delhi to visit the India Independence Exhibition at Rashtrapati Bhavan. As his earlier studies had, the classical Indian art on display, particularly the carvings and sculptures, made a lasting impression on Souza and on his work from the period.

The present lot, a 1951 portrait of a young, girdled and bejewelled Indian girl, reflects the impact that these experiences had on the artist, particularly in its iconic simplicity, frontality, and confident gaze. At the same time, it foreshadows the centrality and importance of the figure or subject in Souza's later work. Reviewing his work in 1949, Rudy von Leyden, the art critic for the Times of India noted, "With Souza things are not so simple. He too strives for formal values, but his subject matter occupies a much larger place in his imagination…in Souza's paintings the subject impresses you most strongly. His preference for the elementary colours gives his work elementary, almost aboriginal qualities, haunting in their effect. In none of the other work is so much passion bridled by so much intellectual effort" (as quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 279).Symbolic of femininity and fecundity, this early work also draws from Souza's engagement with traditional African art, Byzantine icons, and the work of Picasso and the Spanish Romanesque painters, which he encountered after moving to London in 1950. "Souza's early works which were inadvertently imbibing these influences were also incorporating the 'Primitive' via the mediation of the West…In reclaiming the Primitive then Souza was virtually reinventing his own art and this is where his strength lay…Souza's intervention in bringing modern art 'home' in a definitive manner would remain his most inventive act and in doing so he was unquestionably one of the masters" (Ibid., p. 98, 99).

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