Celebrating F.N. Souza
New exhibitions and books offer a glimpse of what makes F.N. Souza relevant even today
An “Untitled” work from the 1960s is currently on display as part of the retrospective, Reminiscing Souza: An Iconoclastic Vision: Celebrating The Birth Centenary Of Francis Newton Souza, at Dhoomimal Art Gallery, Delhi. It is very different from the Goa-born modernist’s iconic largescale pieces. It measures roughly 4x4cm and is an image from a magazine on which F. N. Souza (1924-2002) drew grotesque-looking stick figures in ballpoint pen. The unassuming work is indicative of how the enfant terrible of Indian art rejected rules all through his life. For one, Souza joined the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, at age 16 but was expelled soon after for his active support for the Quit India Movement.
The exhibition, which celebrates Souza’s birth centenary, features over 150 artworks—ranging from nudes, still life, landscapes and portraits in various media —most of them hailing from the gallery’s private collection. The show encapsulates Souza’s comprehensive oeuvre, including his highly experimental chemical drawings, wherein the artist, after pouring a chemical on glossy pages of magazines, drew erotic figures on them. The inventiveness of these chemical drawings was a result of lack of finances: Unlike the UK, which received his figurative works very well, he struggled to find success in the US where abstraction was the trend. Short of funds, he used magazine pages as his blank canvas.
Curated by art historian-author Yashodhara Dalmia, the retrospective looks at the way Souza’s legacy continues to inform the Indian art scene even today. According to Uday Jain, director, Dhoomimal Art Gallery, Souza’s biggest strength was the courage with which he painted. “No ‘pretty’ figures or flowers or mountains, what he painted wasn’t traditionally accepted till then in Indian art,” explains Jain.
To understand the artist’s abiding legacy, it is important to view the artist’s personal and professional journey. “There is something visceral and primeval about his work; many people like to engage with it, but an uncanny unease fills them whenever they try to,” says Janeita Singh, author of FN Souza: The Archetypal Artist, published by Niyogi Books last month. It was this “uneasy space in Souza’s art” that became Singh’s focus for the book, especially the bold image of the female nude on his canvas, starting 1940s onwards. Singh’s book is a “feminist reading of Souza’s art with an equal thrust on its study through a Jungian lens and East-West philosophy.”
Souza’s childhood was marked by loss—losing his father and a little sister at a young age—health issues and a complicated relationship with his mother. This marked his relationships with women in his adult life. All this got translated on to his canvas. The figures in his work kept evolving to reveal savagery, distortion and a rage that simmered in the artist’s own tumultuous mind, especially when he faced failure as an artist in New York and felt rejected for his art in his own homeland.
Shortly after his death though, his works started fetching astronomical prices. In 2008, his Birth set a world record for the most expensive painting by an Indian artist, sold for $2.5 million at a Christie’s auction. In 2015, it was resold at over $4 million. Currently, Christie’s has an online sale running till 27 March as part of the centenary celebrations.
While Dhoomimal will be doing another show on the artist later this year, DAG, Delhi, will be hosting a special exhibition in October. It will pair Souza with his friend, fellow artist and expatriate Avinash Chandra.
The exhibition is on at Dhoomimal Gallery, Delhi, till 30 March, 11am-7pm (closed on Sundays).
Abhilasha Ojha is a Delhi-based art and culture writer.