Painter as rebel

There is no limit set as to how far an artist can go in inventing for himself... Producing works of art for a limited coterie is as bad as painting for the Proletariat. I left the Communist Party because they told me to paint this way and that. I was estranged from many cliques who wanted me to paint what would please them. I don’t believe that a true artist paints for coterie or for the proletariat. I believe with all my soul that he paints only for himself. I have made my art a metabolism. I express myself freely in paint in order to exist. I paint what I want, what I like, what I feel. "I wear my hat as I please indoors or out" said Walt Whitman... All my work—still lives, landscapes, portraits and compositions are based on this principle, or perhaps it is a drop of water or a germ of some sort...Because if man is made in the image of God’s likeness, his creative activity must also be in the likeness of a hypothetical activity of the creature of God. Excerpts from ‘A Fragment of Autobiography’ Words and lines—1959

It is impossible to enter a room full of Souzas and not carry out a dialogue with the artist who turns reality upside down and challenges the romantic muse. A report by Aruti Nayar

Painting for me is not beautiful. It is as ugly as a reptile. I attack it.
Renaissance painters painted men and women making them look like angels. I paint for angels, to show them what men and women really look like.

For an artist who had said "After Picasso, it is Souza", the claim was not just a braggart’s empty posturing. As one enters Delhi’s Kumar Art gallery, which is celebrating its 50 years with a retrospective of Souza, the artist it introduced to India in the early 1960s, it is a journey into an artist’s life and art. It is impossible not to be affected by the room full of Souzas. Souza’s works are a shock, which jolt one into the awareness of a violent reality in an iconoclastic way, by overturning of the world on its head. One can see the mode and manner in which he explored vision and faith, questioned mores and unabashedly cocked a snook at social norms.

From the gentler frames like Townscape, 1967, (Oil on canvas) to the Landscape in spring, 1997, (mixed media), Head (Mixed media),1971 and the Still life of bottle and cup, 1991, (Acrylic on paper), the images become more intense and exude a raw, almost primeval energy. An emotional clash, a distortion of the romantic muse and a mocking, questioning take emerges in paintings such as the Millenium Marriage, 2000, (Mixed media on paper), The Millenium Couple, 2000. (Acrylic on paper) and the Millenium Man. The pictorial tenets of Cubism and Expressionism are very much in evidence as are the contradictions and polarities: Body and spirit, man-woman, religion-sex, freedom-bondage. The sepia tones give way to a riot of colours, yellows, reds, turquoise and blues, with lines becoming more intense and the medium varied.

Born in Saligao, Goa in 1924, Francis Newton Souza came to Mumbai when his mother moved there after his father’s death. A weakling, forever with a runny nose, he clung to his mother who had pledged him to priesthood if he survived the attack of smallpox. He studied art at the J.J School of Art, from where he was expelled for participating in the Quit India Movement. The founder of the Progressive Artist's Movement, along with S.H. Raza and K.H. Ara, among others, he left for Britain soon after Independence. In 1967, Souza moved to New York. Periodically, he did connect to India and more specifically to Goa, the latter’s Byzantine imagery fashioning the strains of his artistic oeuvre.

The enfant terrible of Indian art dissected ideologies and questioned conventions, tread a lonely furrow but also won the Guggenheim International Award in 1958 and the Kalidas Samman in 1998. Souza celebrated passion and a phenomenal lust for life with sexuallly graphic images, be it nudes or men and women intertwined. Khajuraho-like voluptuopus women dot his canvases as do erotic, sexually explicit paintings, a hedonistic celebration of unbridled sexuality. A spiritual strain is manifest in the religious images of St.Francis, whose name Souza’s mother had added to his when the Saint saved him from smallpox. 

Reminiscent of St. Augustine, the medieval conflict between sexual energy and religious fervour forms the cornerstone of Souza’s artistic metier.

In 1962, a London publisher brought out a book on him with a text by the English critic, Edward Mullin. Like his painting, Souza’s writing too exhibits tremendous energy and raw passion. 

Several articles and publications to his credit, ranging from political issues to scientific inquests, and of course the brilliant A fragment of Autobiography: Words and lines, elaborate Souza’s vision and faith.

He energised the Indian art scene and the contemporary art movement in India. Whether it was Souza’s sensational character, non-conformist behaviour and enigmatic personality as the first major Indian artist of our time to make it big abroad, it is impossible not to build-up a dialogue with his art and be indifferent to the vividness of his life and art .

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