Page 97 - Eye of the beholder

The work in the collection titled “Cityscape in Europe” was painted in acrylics on canvas and boldly signed 1965 was illustrative of the changes that he brought into his landscape, which was a sub-theme that recurred frequently in his oeuvre. Around 1960, Souza’s landscapes began to change drastically. The buildings and cities began to sway and tumble and leaned against each other precariously. His cityscapes can be interpreted as belonging to a contemporary age, which threatens to be destructive. An impressive and a haunting landscape, this work had resonance to Van Gogh who put his landscapes in a swirl of spiritual passion. In Cityscape he has delineated imposing distorted building apparently a church because of the Cross on the pediment, looming against a murky and foreboding sky. The colours are melancholic with somber blues and burnt orange dominating the representation of the architecture. The swishy, agitated and uncontrolled brush strokes offered an insight to a mind that passionately was trying to avoid any straight jacketing. In the beautiful Fragment of Autobiography, he wrote, “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”. He articulated his visual language in an ingenious manner and augmented his disturbing and powerful canvases with a sharp and provocative prose appropriately illustrated by his Cityscape in Europe landscape.
The out pouring of his genius took many forms that included sketching, painting and writing. His important writing that was sharp and provocative was the autobiography titled “Nirvana of a Maggot” published in London by Encounter with Stephen Spender as its Editor in 1955 marking his rise to fame as an artist. The book had details of his memories from his earliest days that deeply resonated to his personality as a narcissist, egoistic, self love and as a tortured soul suffering out some guilt that lay deep within the layers of his subconscious.
It is impossible to refer to Souza’s oeuvre without the mention of his Christian themes and the bold unabashed representation of female nudes. The Christian religious subjects and the female nudes were at the heart of his works, which gave him a posturing of an antagonist and voyeurist. His themes from Bible and Old Testament represented with irony and satire was the influence of his catholic background, because as a child his imagination was fed on the church imagery of Portuguese Goa. The underlying theme dominating his religious work was the hypocrisy of the elite, and the church symbolized authority and camouflages. According to Art Historian Ratan Parimoo, “The strict Roman Catholic priestly control on social life of Christian community had provided yet another factor for Souza’s bitterness towards society.... and a fatherless childhood resulting in narcissistic orientations and self absorption”. Souza explained: "... as a Roman Catholic youth born in Goa, I was familiar with the priests bellowing sermons from pulpits against sex and immodesty particularly addressed to women, making them stricken with guilt." Yashodhara Dalmia, the Art Historian summed up his art pointedly “At the heart of Souza’s creativity was the belief that society’s destructive aspects shouldn’t be suppressed, they should be aired and confronted.”
Bibliography
Geeta Kapur, “Contemporary Indian Artists: M.F. Husain, Bhupen Khakkar, Akbar padamsee, F.N. Souza, Ramkumar, J. Swaminathan”, Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi 1978.
Ashrafi S. Bhagat, an unpublished article on Souza for Kala Dirgha Magazine.
Yashodara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives Oxford University Press, New Delhi in 2001
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