Important Notice

More Images

Despite being raised in a staunch Goan Catholic family, as an adult F N Souza vehemently rejected the Christian doctrines of salvation and redemption. He professed, instead, that the purpose of his art was to “show angels the true depravity of our race”, (Artist quoted in Mullins) and once wrote in an essay, “I wanted to do everything; to make others suffer, to make myself suffer. I have no desire to redeem myself or anybody else because Man is... Despite being raised in a staunch Goan Catholic family, as an adult F N Souza vehemently rejected the Christian doctrines of salvation and redemption. He professed, instead, that the purpose of his art was to “show angels the true depravity of our race”, (Artist quoted in Mullins) and once wrote in an essay, “I wanted to do everything; to make others suffer, to make myself suffer. I have no desire to redeem myself or anybody else because Man is by his very nature unredeemable, yet he hankers so desperately after redemption.” (F N Souza, “My Friend and I”, Words & Lines, London: Villers Publications Ltd., 1959, p. 26)

In his youth, Souza was briefly involved with the Communist Party of India and depicted the struggles of the working class in his art during the late 1940s. Though he eventually quit the party in 1949 and emigrated to London, he continued to hold a mirror to society and expose how corrupt and debauched it had become in the aftermath of World War II. His disillusionment with society deepened as he grappled with the grim reality of post-war London and the struggles of being an artist of colour trying to break into the predominantly white British art world in the 1950s. This growing cynicism sharpened his focus on the hypocrisy of the elite, a theme that became one of the most important and persistent of his career. He devised a recurring cast of characters, such as priests, prostitutes, tycoons, bureaucrats, gentlemen, and monarchs, through which he delivered a scathing commentary on humanity, revealing its flaws, moral decay, and the rot at the heart of the ruling class.

Souza once audaciously declared in his diary, “John Minton committed suicide because ‘Matisse and Picasso had done everything there’s to be done in art.’ Unfortunately he had not heard of me. Otherwise he might have been alive today.” (Souza, “Notes from My Diary”, p. 19) Despite the obvious hyperbole, the remark underscores his defiance of not only society but the very conventions of art. He upended the conventions of the genre of portraiture-traditionally meant to be flattering to the sitter-and transformed it into a tool of critique through grotesque caricature and jarring distortion. This subversive approach is exemplified by the present lot, a series of portraits titled Six Gentlemen of Our Times from 1955.

As critic Geeta Kapur remarks, “Around 1955 he fashioned for his purpose a distinctive type of male head for which he is perhaps best known. It is a face without a forehead, bearded and pock-marked, eyes bulging from the sides of the skull like a frog’s, a mouth full of multiple sets of teeth. It is a combined portrait of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, sly, evil and at the same time terrified.” (Geeta Kapur, “Francis Newton Souza: Devil in the Flesh”, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1978, p. 27) These figures may represent the British political establishment or the Westernised upper class of post-Independence India, both of whom Souza saw as perpetuating forms of colonial repression and inequality.

Dressed in suits and ties that suggest a veneer of civility, the “gentlemen” pose stiffly with barely concealed sneers betraying an air of self-importance. Souza uses a frontal composition to evoke a sense of monumentality, only to counter it with distortion and irony. Through grotesque physiognomies, he strips them of all nobility and instead imbues them with menace and absurdity. Whether political leaders, bureaucrats, judges, or religious figures, they are not true gentlemen but emblems of corrupted authority and the morally bankrupt upper classes.

The portraits in the present lot strongly reflect the stylistic traits characteristic of Souza’s iconic heads from the 1950s. As art historian Yashodhara Dalmia observes, “...the soulless eyes are placed on the forehead, the gnashing mouth is fully bared, and the face is a ridged, rocky terrain bounded by lines and petrified by its own violence.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Passion for the Human Figure”, The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 83) The faces are further disfigured by the artist’s trademark crosshatching technique, which he often used in both his line drawings and his paintings. He explained this method through the drawing of a fictitious character Norman Evans, writing in his essay “My Friend and I” from his 1955 book Words & Lines, “The two lines cross-hatched on either side is a spinous vertebra that became life…It is the beginning, the end, and the beginning. The lines cross and divide each other or remain uncrossed. They form and transform into many forms. They spread out like the sun’s rays and fall like the magnitude of its shadow engulfing everything with dark and light…”(Souza, p. 24) Commenting on its effects Dalmia adds, “By dexterously manipulating this he is able to circumvent shading. Instead, he achieves an extraordinarily mobile visage with flickering nerves, gnashing teeth, and flashing eyes.” (Dalmia, p. 83)

Six Gentlemen of Our Times not only captures Souza at his creative peak but also marks a significant turning point in his early artistic career. In 1954, just a year before he drew the present lot, Souza had seriously considered returning to India, having barely managed to scrape by since moving to London. He gave up the plan when a Paris dealer offered him a solo show where he met poet Stephen Spender, the then editor of literary magazine Encounter. Spender introduced him to Peter Watson who subsequently included him in a group exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts alongside major figures such as Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland.

His fortunes shifted dramatically in 1955, when Encounter published his autobiographical essay “Nirvana of a Maggot” in its February issue, coinciding with his debut solo exhibition at Gallery One, run by Victor Musgrave. The show drew the attention of several prominent critics, including John Berger, and marked the beginning of Souza’s rise in the British art scene. As art historian Geeta Kapur notes, “Almost overnight Souza had shot into fame... Souza was the first Indian artist to become something of a sensation in the West. For that matter, even among his Western contemporaries, he stood pretty high on the ladder of success, and it goes without saying that he deserved it. Place him for a moment beside two figurative Expressionists like Graham Sutherland in England and Bernard Buffet in France, the two painters with whom he invites obvious comparison, and one will realize how much more sharply Souza impresses himself on one, using that term literally to mean a mark left on the recipient by the force of pressure.” (Kapur, pp. 11-12)

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site