Important Notice

Having grown up in a Roman Catholic family in Portuguese-ruled Goa, F N Souza felt the presence of the Catholic church loom large over daily life. He was drawn less to its doctrine than to its spectacle and ceremony: the grandeur of its architecture, the luminous stained-glass windows, priests in ornate vestments, the brightly coloured coterie of saints that stared beatifically from gilded niches, and the haunting image of a bloodied, suffering... Having grown up in a Roman Catholic family in Portuguese-ruled Goa, F N Souza felt the presence of the Catholic church loom large over daily life. He was drawn less to its doctrine than to its spectacle and ceremony: the grandeur of its architecture, the luminous stained-glass windows, priests in ornate vestments, the brightly coloured coterie of saints that stared beatifically from gilded niches, and the haunting image of a bloodied, suffering Christ nailed to the crucifix. Though he eventually changed from an ardent believer who would “kneel and pray for hours” to a staunch atheist as an adult, the Catholic church remained a powerful source of inspiration for him throughout his artistic career. (F N Souza, Words and Lines, London: Villiers Publications Ltd., 1959, p. 10)

In Souza’s view, the church was deeply corrupt and overrun by hypocritical clergymen driven by power and greed even as they claimed to speak for divine will. Through his portraits of saints, martyrs, and other religious figures, he sought to expose what he perceived as their moral duplicity. Referencing these paintings critic Geeta Kapur remarks, “...the theme of hypocrisy and the Church, in so far as it symbolises absolute authority and camouflages with subtle cunning the hypocrisies of the elite, has remained one of the most important subjects of his paintings [...] The recurring portraits of priests, prophets, cardinals, and Popes are therefore to be taken literally for what they are but also symbolically as representatives of institutions and authority, only more treacherous in that they claim divine sanction. That is to say, the villains of the Catholic Church he represents are both real and allegorical. It is this double connotation of fact and symbol and his interlocked feelings of secret fascination and objective disgust which make Souza’s handling of religious figures so unique.” (Geeta Kapur, “Francis Newton Souza: Devil in the Flesh”, Contemporary Indian Artists, Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1978, pp. 19 - 20)

“I use aesthetics instead of knives and bullets to protest against stuffed?shirts and hypocrites.” - F N SOUZA

The subject of the present lot is likely a saint composed with the iconic stance and frontal gaze characteristic of Romanesque art, a style that Souza became acquainted with during a visit to Barcelona in 1962. Yet he completely subverts the conventions of portraiture, revealing both the sharpness of his critique and his inventiveness with the human form. The figure is neither idealised nor reverential. On the contrary, its face is grotesquely disfigured with multiple eyes, uneven teeth, and tubular protrusions, illustrating the new approach to figuration that Souza adopted in the 1960s.

The turbulent landscape in the background heightens the ominous undertones of the painting and emphasises the malevolent force lurking behind a supposedly spiritual presence. The setting appears, in art historian Yashodhara Dalmia’s words, “seemingly driven by a cataclysmic force, which wreaks havoc... The tumbling houses in their frenzied movement are also symbolic of all things falling apart, of the very root of things being shaken, of a world of the holocaust and thalidomide babies.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Passion for the Human Figure”, The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 93)

However compulsive or unsettling such portraits may appear, it is always clear they are intended to be human. As art critic Edwin Mullins explains, “Souza’s imagery is not a surrealist vision-a self-conscious aesthetic shock-so much as a spontaneous re-creation of the world as he has seen it, distilled in the mind by a host of private experiences and associations.” (Edwin Mullins, Souza, London: Anthony Blond Ltd., 1962, p. 39)

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