Important Notice

“In a sense Souza is a dedicated vulgarian. The weapon with which he makes his first attack on our sensibilities is vulgarity; and one of the principal claims these pictures have on our attention is the challenge they throw down, that we should reconsider yet again what, in terms of art, words like ‘vulgar’ and ‘shocking’ really mean. And what it is that we ask of a work of art” (Edwin Mullins, The Human and the Divine Predicament: New Paintings... “In a sense Souza is a dedicated vulgarian. The weapon with which he makes his first attack on our sensibilities is vulgarity; and one of the principal claims these pictures have on our attention is the challenge they throw down, that we should reconsider yet again what, in terms of art, words like ‘vulgar’ and ‘shocking’ really mean. And what it is that we ask of a work of art” (Edwin Mullins, The Human and the Divine Predicament: New Paintings by F.N. Souza, Grosvenor Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1964, not paginated).

Of his extensive body of work, it is perhaps Souza’s virulent heads and portraits from the mid and late 1950s that cause the most shock and offense, and thus fit Mullins’ description best. As the critic notes, “If [Souza] was creating monsters, probably no one would be troubled; but because his images are clearly intended to be human, one is compelled to ask why his faces have eyes high up in the forehead…why he paints mouths that stretch like hair combs across the face, and limbs that branch out like thistles. Souza’s imagery is not a surrealist vision – a self-conscious aesthetic shock – so much as a spontaneous re-creation of the world as he has seen it, distilled in the mind by a host of private experiences and associations” (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Ltd, London, 1962, p. 39).

Amongst these private associations, it was Souza’s experiences of the hypocrisy and manipulation of the clergy and gentry that animated these portraits the most. For example, although the subject in the present lot is dressed in a meticulously patterned tunic with a wide ruffled collar, indicative of his wealth and high standing in society, his vacant expression seems joyless, highlighting what Aziz Kurtha terms the “…sorrow of emotional poverty and the soulless grandeur of inherited power”. This man, like many of Souza’s caricatured subjects, “…has no trace of pleasure on his troubled face but he is adorned with the accoutrements of royal privilege which seem to tie him down” (Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2006, p. 85).

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site