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Lot 64

 

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“I seek beauty more than knowledge. In fact, knowledge can be ugly.” – F N SOUZA

For F N Souza, the year 1954, the same year in which the present lot was made, marked a critical turning point in his artistic journey. It was from this year onwards that his unique style of painting gained recognition and he began his meteoric rise to international fame while living and working in postwar London. “The importance of Francis Newton... “I seek beauty more than knowledge. In fact, knowledge can be ugly.” – F N SOUZA

For F N Souza, the year 1954, the same year in which the present lot was made, marked a critical turning point in his artistic journey. It was from this year onwards that his unique style of painting gained recognition and he began his meteoric rise to international fame while living and working in postwar London. “The importance of Francis Newton Souza the young Goan painter who has settled in London is that he has resolved the dilemma of style as no other modern Indian artist has done. He has crossed Indian bazaar painting with the Picasso style ...to produce a manner that is at once individual and consistent and which might be said to suggest a caricature of a Byzantine icon.” (David Sylvester, “A Goan Painter,” New Statesman, 14 December 1957)

However, the years since his arrival in England in 1949 were bleak and filled with hardship for Souza who quickly realised this was not the promised land he had imagined. “Whatever promises were there were in the museums. But the people, and the grimness of London, were quite horrifying. One immediately thought, ‘What?’ These people used to rule India, you know? It was unbelievable. When I went to London, England still had rationing. It was post-war – they were still smarting from the aftermath of the war.” (Artist quoted in F N Souza, New York: Saffronart and Grosvenor Gallery, 2008, p. 8)

As Souza struggled with the deprivation that was brought on by poverty, he also found it difficult to break into London’s famed art circles. In fact, in 1954, the artist “was on the point of going back to India. It seemed the only way he could go on painting, for at least in India he could sleep on the street if necessary, and live off rice. In England it was too cold to sleep on the street, even if the police would have allowed it, and rice cost more than he could readily afford.” (Edwin Mullins, F N Souza, London: Anthony Blond
Ltd., 1962, p. 23)

His luck, however, suddenly took a turn in 1954. This was the year where he met poet, critic and editor of the literary magazine Encounter, Stephen Spender, exhibited his works in a solo exhibition at the Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris and at the Venice Biennale, and met Liselotte Kristian, the “love of his life.” (Selma Carvalho, “A Morning with F N Souza’s Daughters,” State of the Art, Mumbai: Saffronart, 2 September 2013, online) His works also attracted the attention of Victor Musgrave, the owner of a tiny gallery in Litchfield Street, the original Gallery One, during this time.

The following year saw Souza having his first solo exhibition at Gallery One, which coincided with the publication of his famous autobiographical essay “Nirvana of a Maggot” in Encounter. The combination of the two brought Souza instant recognition, more or less overnight, according to Mullins. John Berger, critic for The New Statesman and Nation, in a review of Souza’s Gallery One exhibition, stated, “How much Souza’s pictures derive from western art and how much from the hieratic temple tradition of his country, I cannot say. Analysis breaks down and intuition takes over. It is obvious that he is a superb designer and an excellent draughtsman. But I find it quite impossible to assess his work comparatively. Because he straddles several traditions but serves none.” (John Berger, “An Indian Painter,” The New Statesman and Nation, 26 February 1955, online)

Souza’s works during these early years in London were a mix of bold figurations, religious still life compositions, striking female nudes, and carefully structured landscapes. Inspired by his surroundings, his work from the mid-1950s saw him following “a rather commonplace convention popularised by Bernard Buffet: a severe linear structure built up of a multitude of right-angle lines, the bare trees in the landscape providing the lyrical touch.” (Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 1979, p. 30)

Souza followed an unrestrained style of painting that resulted in thought-provoking and powerful images that drew stylistic elements from classical Indian art, African tribal art, and Western modernism. A closer look at his artistic oeuvre shows a wide range of influences ranging from Goan folk traditions and the temple structures of Mathura and Khajuraho, to well-known Renaissance paintings, landscapes from 18th and 19th century Europe, and paintings by the modern masters. These influences resulted in Souza’s technique of using line with economy without letting go of the finer details in the form as well as a profusion of crosshatched strokes when it came to the overall structure of his subject.

Painted in 1954, this untitled landscape is an almost perfect expression of the constructed compositions and line techniques at which Souza excelled while appearing to follow the rule of thirds. However, it stands apart from his other landscapes from this period in both form and format.

A striking composition, the present lot has been painted in a vertical format, which was different from Souza’s standard landscape orientation. There is a sense of peace and calm in this painting, with the houses clustered together in order, without appearing to be stacked upon one another – a theme that was noted in other works from this period. The sandy yellow sky dominates and adds to the overall stillness of the work. While the painting is probably set in England, the exact location remains undetermined. The beauty of the painting lies in its simplicity, with the sloping roofs, trees, even the reflection of the houses and foliage in the waterbody in the foreground drawn using Souza’s “iconic line” and highlight his mastery over the elements of form and space.

The austere nature of the present lot is perhaps a reflection of the angst he felt during his first five years in London. Desolate and still, this landscape, and others from this period, are populated not by people, but by dark, scattered houses and stark trees, each framed by the artist’s aggressive black line.

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