In 1949, during an exhibition at the Art Society of India in Bombay, a scandal was unveiled. On a life-size canvas, was a six-foot-tall stark naked man with a paintbrush in his hand and looking directly at the audience. The police were called, and the painting was hastily covered. All the paintings of the artist were removed and his studios were searched for ‘pornographic material’.
The artist was Francis Newton Souza, or FN Souza, the founding member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, which took shape in 1947. It was hailed as the vanguard of genuine modernism in Indian art by the group’s founders such as MF Hussain, SH Raza and Souza among others.
After being suspended1945 from the Sir JJ School of Art for participating in the Quit India Movement, Souza claimed that the collective was formed in response to two opposing groups: the academic realists at the art school from where he was expelled, and the chauvinist “retrograde” revivalists of Indian art. But the immediate catalyst was the Bombay Art Society’s decision to turn down the artwork submitted by FN Souza and SH Raza.
On the day of his suspension from the prestigious art school in Mumbai, Souza created The Blue Lady (1945). Critics call it a milestone work painted with the ‘pigment squeezed straight out of the tube and spread over the canvas with a palette knife. In his monograph of Souza, British art critic Edwin Mullins recalled that “it was an angry impulsive picture, and in painting it, he [Souza] discovered the way he wanted to paint”. Souza never went back to school. The rebel in him had risen.
As a dedicated vulgarian, Souza’s works make for uncomfortable viewing. Giving pleasure was never his intent.
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The rebel with a cause
Born Francisco Victor Newton de Souza on 12 April 1924, in Saligao, Goa, he moved to Mumbai with his mother after his father’s death. He was expelled from St. Francis Xavier’s College for painting erotic images on the wall of the boys’ room. In protest, he said he had merely “corrected” an existing drawing.
Souza dabbled in many different genres and styles, but he is best known for his powerful figurative work, line drawings, and a sequence of “black paintings” he created in London in the 1950s and 1960s.
After his death in 2002, English painter Christopher Wood called Souza “India’s most important, and famous, artist” in The Guardian. Relatively unknown during that time in India, the cost of his artwork skyrocketed soon after his death.
Later, his highest-ever artwork sale price was $10,000 (about Rs 7.6 lakh currently). Kiran Nadar, the chairperson of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi, purchased his oil on board piece Birth in 2015 for $ 3.5 million (approx. Rs 29 crore) making it “the highest-paid Indian painting in history”. In 2022, Souza’s Girl in Yellow Sweater (1957) was sold for Rs 14.4 crore at the AstaGuru Auction House in Panaji, Goa.
Souza’s expressive style resulted in arresting visuals that provoked deep reflection. His canon of work included landscapes, stills, naked women, and church icons, all of which he represented with a distortion of form. The paintings by Souza showed his disdain for the mundane and his dissatisfaction with social norms. The Goan artist’s Roman Catholic heritage is hinted at in a sketch of Mary nursing Jesus, but the juxtaposition with a sketch of a couple copulating is likely to have outraged a more traditional audience in the 1940s.
Many different artistic movements have left their mark on Souza’s work: the folk art of his native place Goa, the rich colours of the Renaissance, the holy fervour of the Catholic church, the landscapes of 18th and 19th century Europe, and the innovative styles of modern art. Sexual tension and friction between male protagonists and female antagonists was a common motif in his works, art specialist Nishad Avari wrote in his piece on Souza.
“Renaissance painters painted men and women to look like angels, I paint for angels to show them what men and women really look like”, he once said.
Souza moved to London in 1949, and after several difficult years, he eventually created a name for himself in the art world. His autobiographical essay Nirvana of a Maggot was published in the 1955at the same time as his one-man show at London’s Gallery One. He was honoured with the Guggenheim International Fellowship in 1958 for his painting titled Birth.
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The dawn of success to the dusk of obscurity
Souza’s most influential works were created in the 1950s and 1960s, when he combined the aesthetics of classical Indian painting, African tribal art and Western modernism. He branched out from painting landscapes and portraits to depicting holy scenes like the crucifixion and the Last Supper as well as more erotically charged images that bordered on violence.
The Tate Britain art gallery in London bought Souza’s Crucifixion (1959) in 1993. It depicted a black, jagged-edged Christ who was “scourged and dripping, with matted hair knotted in plaited thorns,” as Souza wrote in his collection “Words and Lines” (1959).
After rising to prominence in London, Souza faced a decline in the 1960s. His reputation as a philanderer affected his career. Beginning with his affair with 17-year-old British-American woman, Barbara Zinkant, it continued through his divorce from Maria Souza and the end of his marriage to model Liselotte de Kristian.
With a decline in commissions, Souza moved to New York in 1967 with his second wife Barbara. She gave birth to their son in 1971.
He was one of the first Indian artists to gain prominence in the West after India’s Independence. In 2005, he was honoured with a major retrospective at Tate Britain titled Religion and Erotica, and in 2013, his Crucifixion was re-hung at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.
He died in Mumbai due to a heart attack on 28 March, 2002 at the age of 77. His funeral barely saw a handful of people and no one from his family was present.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)