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In the long tradition of artist friendships,
the Progressive Artists’ Group stands out as
one in which the artists maintained lifelong
relationships through good and bad times,
encouraging and critiquing each other in
their personal and professional lives. Among
them were M F Husain and F N Souza, both
powerful personalities with their own unique
visual language. Souza first encountered
Husain when he saw his painting,
Potters
at the Bombay Art Society’s 1947 group
exhibition. Impressed by his talent, he invited
Husain to join the Bombay Progressive
Artists’ Group. “...Souza in particular, [was] to
be a seminal influence on Husain. They met
often and discussed issues that concerned
the direction of their work and its reuse of
existing traditions.” (Yashodhara Dalmia,
The
Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives
,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p.
102) The short‒lived group was a worthy
precursor to decades of interactions through
which artists of the post‒Independence era
were engaged in defining new national and
personal identities of modernism.
Image courtesy of M. F. Husain Foundation
F N Souza
© Jyoti Bhatt