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Lot Essay
Although they are devoid of human figures, Francis Newton Souza’s landscapes evoke the same sense of disquiet in the viewer that has come to be associated with his disfigured nudes and distorted portraits. His works in this genre, particularly those painted in the 1960s, are impulsive and emotionally charged, expressing both exuberance and violence. Writing about Souza’s paintings of this period, the critic Geeta Kapur observed that “Around 1960 [...] Souza’s landscapes begin to change drastically. A huge cracker seems to go off in the foundations of his cities and the buildings begin to sway and tumble and lean against each other in frantic postures.” (G. Kapur, ‘Devil in the Flesh’, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi, 1978, p. 30)
In this vivid and energetic townscape from 1963, inspired equally by the stained glass windows of the churches he visited as a child in Goa and the work of artists like Georges Rouault and Chaim Soutine, Souza expresses his conflicted vision of nature and society using thick black lines painted over dense swathes of vermillion, yellow and blue. The compressed mass of architectural structures and foliage that these lines crudely define emphasises the volatility of the scene, filling the frame completely and threatening to explode beyond the painted surface.
Souza’s landscapes like this one appear “to be driven by a cataclysmic force, which wrecks havoc […] Most of these are cityscapes following, at first, a simple rectilinear structure, which later, in the 1960s, gives way to an apocalyptic vision. 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 [...] of nature gone awry, of a demonic force behind the appearance of things.” (Y. Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi, 2001, p. 93)
In this vivid and energetic townscape from 1963, inspired equally by the stained glass windows of the churches he visited as a child in Goa and the work of artists like Georges Rouault and Chaim Soutine, Souza expresses his conflicted vision of nature and society using thick black lines painted over dense swathes of vermillion, yellow and blue. The compressed mass of architectural structures and foliage that these lines crudely define emphasises the volatility of the scene, filling the frame completely and threatening to explode beyond the painted surface.
Souza’s landscapes like this one appear “to be driven by a cataclysmic force, which wrecks havoc […] Most of these are cityscapes following, at first, a simple rectilinear structure, which later, in the 1960s, gives way to an apocalyptic vision. 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 [...] of nature gone awry, of a demonic force behind the appearance of things.” (Y. Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi, 2001, p. 93)