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Lot Essay
The founder of the Progressive Artists Group, Francis Newton Souza was an articulate genius whose artistic career spanned five decades and three continents. Characterized by his distinct powerful lines and bold, provocative compositions, his paintings are simultaneously imbued with a sense of raw energy and beauty.
Born in Goa, a small Portuguese Catholic colony on the southern India coast, Francis Newton Souza experienced the death of both his father and eldest sister before he had turned 2 years old. Moving with his widowed mother to Mumbai shortly thereafter, Catholicism remained an important part of his upbringing. However, Souza had a contentious relationship with the Catholic Church, captivated by it during his youth only to question it deeply later in life. The artist's early works mix elements of the Catholic imagery found in his birthplace with stylistic techniques of western modernism, his paintings suggesting the heavy black lines of Georges Rouault and tumultuous brush strokes of Chaim Soutine. Souza explains, "As a child I was fascinated by the grandeur of the Church and by the stories of tortured saints my grandmother used to tell me." (E. Mullins, F.N. Souza, p. 55) However, the idealized faces of these saints which adorned his churches and cathedrals turned virulent and unforgiving in the hand of Souza. "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." (E. Mullins, F.N. Souza, p. 82)
Pietà was painted in the year 1947 - a critical year in Souza's life. India gained her independence from the British Raj, Souza along with his close associates formed the Progressive Artists Group and his painting was accepted and exhibited at the Bombay Art Society Annual exhibition for the first time and he received an award for it. It is also in 1947 that he married his first wife Maria.
In Pietà the figure of Christ is nailed to the cross with the grotesque character of Mary cowering below him. "This is a savage work, not that I am a savage but I was brought up in the savagery of a corrupt and outdated medieval religion, the Roman Catholic Church in Goa." (Artist Statement, A. Kurtha, Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art, Ahmedabad, 2006, p.18) Polarizing the tension between man and God, perpetually rigorous in debating cutting-edge intellectual and artistic developments throughout his career, Souza painted with a raw, expressionist and highly idiosyncratic style as evidenced in Pieta.
Alkazi notes, Souza's fundamental aim is to destroy art as it is commonly understood, and to re-create it in terms of a Black Mass in which the living God is eaten, so that, through this primitive and barbarous rite, man may partake of his eternal spirit and embody in himself its resurrection. (E. Alkazi, Souza's Seasons in Hell, p. 77)
A fantastical autobiographical painting, a critical tour de force from the artists' oeuvre, Pieta is one of the most important works from the artist's early period that exhibits Souza's absolute surety of execution and mastery of composition. Intertwined with mixed emotions, underscored by the artists bold, sinewy lines that flow forcefully next to the bright and vivid colors make the canvas shimmers like a stained glass church window.
Born in Goa, a small Portuguese Catholic colony on the southern India coast, Francis Newton Souza experienced the death of both his father and eldest sister before he had turned 2 years old. Moving with his widowed mother to Mumbai shortly thereafter, Catholicism remained an important part of his upbringing. However, Souza had a contentious relationship with the Catholic Church, captivated by it during his youth only to question it deeply later in life. The artist's early works mix elements of the Catholic imagery found in his birthplace with stylistic techniques of western modernism, his paintings suggesting the heavy black lines of Georges Rouault and tumultuous brush strokes of Chaim Soutine. Souza explains, "As a child I was fascinated by the grandeur of the Church and by the stories of tortured saints my grandmother used to tell me." (E. Mullins, F.N. Souza, p. 55) However, the idealized faces of these saints which adorned his churches and cathedrals turned virulent and unforgiving in the hand of Souza. "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." (E. Mullins, F.N. Souza, p. 82)
Pietà was painted in the year 1947 - a critical year in Souza's life. India gained her independence from the British Raj, Souza along with his close associates formed the Progressive Artists Group and his painting was accepted and exhibited at the Bombay Art Society Annual exhibition for the first time and he received an award for it. It is also in 1947 that he married his first wife Maria.
In Pietà the figure of Christ is nailed to the cross with the grotesque character of Mary cowering below him. "This is a savage work, not that I am a savage but I was brought up in the savagery of a corrupt and outdated medieval religion, the Roman Catholic Church in Goa." (Artist Statement, A. Kurtha, Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art, Ahmedabad, 2006, p.18) Polarizing the tension between man and God, perpetually rigorous in debating cutting-edge intellectual and artistic developments throughout his career, Souza painted with a raw, expressionist and highly idiosyncratic style as evidenced in Pieta.
Alkazi notes, Souza's fundamental aim is to destroy art as it is commonly understood, and to re-create it in terms of a Black Mass in which the living God is eaten, so that, through this primitive and barbarous rite, man may partake of his eternal spirit and embody in himself its resurrection. (E. Alkazi, Souza's Seasons in Hell, p. 77)
A fantastical autobiographical painting, a critical tour de force from the artists' oeuvre, Pieta is one of the most important works from the artist's early period that exhibits Souza's absolute surety of execution and mastery of composition. Intertwined with mixed emotions, underscored by the artists bold, sinewy lines that flow forcefully next to the bright and vivid colors make the canvas shimmers like a stained glass church window.