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Lot Essay
"The Landscapes, architectonic with their 'cubic factors' are ultimately lyrical. There's an unrestrained enthusiasm, a liberty in the application of color that is applied swiftly with a palette knife, creating smooth pulsating textures."(A. Ludwig, Souza, exhibition catalogue, Dhoomi Mal Gallery, New Delhi)
Houses on a Green Hill by Francis Newton Souza oscillates between the lyrical, the sublime and the malevolent. Its corniced buildings, twisting line and piercing steeple like chimney, suggesting not only the Catholic architecture which informed so much of Souza's oeuvre but also his immediate North London surrounding, where he lived around Belsize Park and Hampstead Heath. This landscape augmented by rich blues, greens, reds and browns, is in fact reminiscent of stained glass windows found in churches further alluding to the Catholic imagery that would perennially permeate his practice.
Jagdish Swaminathan describes Souza's cityscapes as "singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions." They are the "congealed visions of a mysterious world. Whether standing solidly in enamelled petrification or delineated in thin color with calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors." (J. Swaminathan, Souza's Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, 1995, p. 31)
In landscapes such as Houses on a Green Hill, Souza effectively demonstrates the inherent tension between nature and civilization. His works, which often depict the sky as an equally viscous force against the buildings and trees, become treatises on the conflating powers of god, man and the natural world. Rooftops cut sharply into the translucent, glowing auburn sky, suggesting not harmony but a tumultuous battle between dissonant elements, emphasized through the violent brushstroke and dramatic palette. Houses on a Green Hill, drenched in foreboding, is where the pastoral and urban traditions collide in a celebration of visceral violence. Juxtaposing naturalism with reverential expression, Souza represents the landscape as a sublime scene of primordial power. This work is abstract perhaps not in appearance but in its existential undercurrents, the absence of humanity at such an epicentre of civilization, where religion, modernity and nature coexist in a perpetual struggle.
Houses on a Green Hill by Francis Newton Souza oscillates between the lyrical, the sublime and the malevolent. Its corniced buildings, twisting line and piercing steeple like chimney, suggesting not only the Catholic architecture which informed so much of Souza's oeuvre but also his immediate North London surrounding, where he lived around Belsize Park and Hampstead Heath. This landscape augmented by rich blues, greens, reds and browns, is in fact reminiscent of stained glass windows found in churches further alluding to the Catholic imagery that would perennially permeate his practice.
Jagdish Swaminathan describes Souza's cityscapes as "singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions." They are the "congealed visions of a mysterious world. Whether standing solidly in enamelled petrification or delineated in thin color with calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors." (J. Swaminathan, Souza's Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, 1995, p. 31)
In landscapes such as Houses on a Green Hill, Souza effectively demonstrates the inherent tension between nature and civilization. His works, which often depict the sky as an equally viscous force against the buildings and trees, become treatises on the conflating powers of god, man and the natural world. Rooftops cut sharply into the translucent, glowing auburn sky, suggesting not harmony but a tumultuous battle between dissonant elements, emphasized through the violent brushstroke and dramatic palette. Houses on a Green Hill, drenched in foreboding, is where the pastoral and urban traditions collide in a celebration of visceral violence. Juxtaposing naturalism with reverential expression, Souza represents the landscape as a sublime scene of primordial power. This work is abstract perhaps not in appearance but in its existential undercurrents, the absence of humanity at such an epicentre of civilization, where religion, modernity and nature coexist in a perpetual struggle.