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Lot 27

 

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"Here were statuesque women modelled in planes jagged enough to draw blood, strangers to the sedate portraits favoured by the patrons of the age. Here, also, were landscapes laid in impasto thick enough to chew, startling when mounted beside the lyrical panoramas of the countryside, the impressionistic cityscapes and the faux Mughal or Rajput miniatures approved for display by prevailing taste. And here were robust, voluptuous nudes that had... "Here were statuesque women modelled in planes jagged enough to draw blood, strangers to the sedate portraits favoured by the patrons of the age. Here, also, were landscapes laid in impasto thick enough to chew, startling when mounted beside the lyrical panoramas of the countryside, the impressionistic cityscapes and the faux Mughal or Rajput miniatures approved for display by prevailing taste. And here were robust, voluptuous nudes that had cast aside the coyness of their demure life-class counterparts, to delight in the immediacy of skin, breath and pulse." (Ranjit Hoskote, "The Progressives Revisited", Continuum: Progressive Artists' Group, New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery, p22)

Francis Newton Souza has many badges he can proudly display: founder of the Progressive Artists' Group, one of the most renowned contemporary Indian artists in the international scene; versatile, scandalous, subversive with his 'proletarian' ways of art: a much-needed iconoclast.

Famous for scorning renaissance painters for portraying men and women like angels...Souza is renowned for his disfigured portraits and mangled heads. The present lot, a portrait of a priest with a pockmarked face and multiple eyes, reflects the artist's compulsion to expose pretence, as well as his own rocky relationship with the Roman Catholic Church.

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