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F N SOUZA
(1924 ‒ 2002)
Untitled
Signed and dated 'Souza 90' (centre right)
1990
Oil on canvas
47.75 x 59.25 in (121.5 x 150.7 cm)
$ 54,690 ‒ 70,315
Rs 35,00,000 ‒ 45,00,000
EXHIBITED:
Distillations
, Mumbai: Birla Academy of Art
and Culture, 17 October ‒ 4 November 2000
F N Souza & H A Gade Show
, The Arts Trust,
Online, December 2014
PUBLISHED:
Distillations
, Mumbai: Birla Academy of Art
and Culture, 2000 (illustrated, unpaginated)
With a visual language that was deeply personal and offered astute
insights into society, Francis Newton Souza was at the forefront of
Indian modernism. His iconoclastic approach to painting was seen
as much in his landscapes as in his scathing portraits. He worked
with a range of materials and experimented with technique and
composition. Souza’s landscapes “vary from linear blocks to almost
abstract colourful shapes with trees in the foreground to offset the
geometric lines.” (Aziz Kurtha,
Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western
and Modern Indian Art
, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2006, p. 118)
The present lot was painted in 1990, two decades after his move
from London to New York. The present lot, with its unrestrained
gestural brushstrokes, presents the fiery and unbridled approach that
made Souza an icon of modern Indian art. The subtle presence of
steeples against a mountainous backdrop points to his continued
thematic preoccupation with the church. It also recalls the European
landscapes that formed a large part of his oeuvre during his time in
France and Spain in the early 1960s.
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