FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA: 100th ANNIVERSARY- Christie’s March 2024 auctions of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art
New York/Mumbai – In celebration of Francis Newton Souza’s 100th birth anniversary, Christie’s March 2024 auctions of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art will present 36 lots by the artist in the live auction on 20 March as well as in the online sale running from 13 to 27 March 2024.
Over the course of his six-decade career, Souza experimented with a number of genres and styles, but it is probably his powerful figurative practice during the 1950s and ’60s, his detailed landscapes and his skilful line drawings for which he is most famous. He is also revered for his focus on themes and motifs including religion, the female form and the dichotomy between good and evil.
‘Souza’s time in London is widely regarded as the apex of his career,’ commented Nishad Avari, Head of Indian Art at Christie’s. ‘It was when he was the most driven and then found the means to produce works on a larger scale. His works made between 1955-1963 rarely come to market are therefore in higher demand among collectors of Indian Modernism. Nowadays, the collector base for Souza’s work extends far beyond South Asia, Europe and America. We are seeing more and more East Asian clients looking at the work of Indian Modernists.’ concluded Nishad Avari.
The beginnings – Goan landscapes and people
The Naked Family (Bombay Beggars)
(estimate $300,000-500,000)
In the late 1940s, Souza was primarily painting small-format watercolours of Goan landscapes and illustrating the plight of the Indian poor. The Naked Family (Bombay Beggars) dated 1944 (estimate: $30,000-50,000) demonstrates Souza’s politicization at the time, and its effect on his early body of works. He devised his figures according to class-types, showed them in their environment and labelled them with appropriate titles. He depicted the plight of the poor (Goan peasants, Bombay proletariat); he exposed the villains (capitalists in particular, the bourgeoisie in general). He painted in an idiom belonging broadly to the Social Realist category. Another example in the auction is Men in Boats dated 1945, which was acquired directly from the artist by the present owner and will be seen publicly for the first time in over 70 years.
The London years
Souza left Bombay for London in 1949 in search of patronage and a more liberal audience for his work. Although he would remain in London for the better part of two decades, his early years in the capital (1949-1954) were among the most challenging of his career. Once he found critical acclaim, patronage and commercial success, Souza painted some of his finest works in London.
We are happy to be able to offer works from the collection of Robin Howard CBE as part of our live auction this season. Howard’s silent support of Souza, both directly and through Gallery One, make him an irrefutably essential influence on the artist’s success in the 1950s and ‘60s, the fundamental period that tracks Souza’s transition from his early big break to one of the most well-known members of the London School of artists and then one of the most venerated Indian artists of the twentieth century.
The Lovers
(estimate: $700,000-1,000,000)
One of the works from the Howard collection, The Lovers from 1960, is among the artist’s most important figurative paintings. Unseen in public since it was painted, and only known from a black and white image, its monumental scale belies the sensitivity and warmth conveyed by the image of a couple in tender embrace. While the male figure could perhaps represent the artist, his companion may well be modelled on Liselotte Kristian, who was Souza’s partner at the time and featured in many of his paintings from the period. The brilliant reds, yellows, greens and oranges of the two subjects’ tunics are heightened with gold, giving the work a sense of opulence in addition to its tenderness.
Landscape of Hampstead
(estimate $70,000-100,000)
Landscape of Hampstead, London which he painted in 1964, only left Souza’s studio in the 1990s, while he was living in New York. Since then, the work remained within the same family and will be offered for the first time at auction. This painting offers one of the artist’s interpretations of the North London neighbourhood where he lived at the time. Maximizing his use of the canvas, Souza constructs this cityscape from a series of overlapping and highly faceted geometric forms. Collapsing depth of field, he circumvents a traditional one-point perspective allowing his architectonic structures to build tightly upon each other in a highly cubistic manner. The moonlit buildings in this painting also recall the Catholic architecture which is influential in Souza’s oeuvre. The sheer strength of Souza’s signature black outline is only augmented by the thick red paint he layers over these forms, making the buildings seem to emerge out of the dark night sky.
The visual culture of Catholicism
Raised as a Roman Catholic in Goa, Souza was initially enthralled by the various facets and traditions of the Church and its representatives, from the imposing architecture to the vestments of its priests and the implements they used in worship. Although this fascination would turn into a repudiation of the faith later in life, the visual culture of Catholicism would continue to influence his work.
Priest with Chalice
(estimate $500,000-700,000)
Priest with Chalice from 1953 is one of the earliest and most powerful portraits of the clergy that Souza painted and draws equally from Spanish Romanesque traditions of religious painting and the work of modern Expressionist painters. Further, Souza’s technique of almost sculpting in paint, using thick black lines, owes a strong debt to the work of the French artist Georges Rouault. The dark figure is represented like a Romanesque icon, the rich fabric with its elaborately pattern, the face shrouded in mystery. Foreshadowing a series of black paintings Souza worked on more than a decade later. After almost fifty years in a private American collection, the work will be offered with an estimate of $500,000-700,000.
Untitled (Head of a Cardinal)
(estimate $250,000-350,000)
Untitled (Head of a Cardinal) painted in 1960 was exhibited at Gallery One, where Robin Howard CBE acquired it / illustrated above right. The painting is making its next public appearance 60 years later. . The painting is part of a series of portraits of cardinals that Souza painted in the early 1960s. Framed against what may be doorway or window, the subject of this portrait wears a regal crimson mozetta or cape, a clear indication of his rank in the Roman Catholic Church and rises mountain-like to occupy most of the painted surface.
The South Asian Modern + Contemporary live auction on 20 March and its online sale (13 to 27 March) will showcase works by all sought after Indian masters, beside the 36 works by Francis Newton Souza.
(This story has not been edited by News Mania staff and is published from a Media Release)
