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F. N. Souza

1924-2002

0 Artworks

FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA was born in 1924 at Portuguese Goa, Souza joined the Sir J.J.School of Art, Mumbai in 1940. He was a founder member of the Progressive Artists Group, which held its first exhibition in Mumbai in 1948. However the following year Souza left India and moved to London. The works he produced in 1950s and 1960s reflect his Catholic upbringing in Goa, which had a great influence upon him as a child. He has participated in many international exhibitions including Art Now in India, London (1965), India Myth and Reality, Museum of Modern Art Oxford (1982), Contemporary Indian Art, Royal Academy, London (1982) and Coups de Coeur, Halles de L'lle, Geneva (1987). Since 1970 Souza has lived in New York, but travels regularly back to India. STATEMENT " The structure of nature is a hierarchy of nouances, from ugliness to beauty, beauty is the final nouance of nature. I am searching for that beauty. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but in the cultivated eye". "Words & lines" - F.N.Souza. FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA... " A series, over two hundred of black canvases and a number of rather abstract compositions in strong colour. The black paintings are more impressive. They are like stained glass windows, the form outlined in thick lines like lead. As you move before them and different facets catch the light, they vary in tone, texture (like black velvet) and colour (not only blacks and grays, but impressions of purples and indigo)....Cyril Barnett. Souza/Geofrey Rao, Studio International, London, May, 1966. " Souza is a painter of cityscapes and religion themes. While in the latter, he is loaded with a troubnled presentiment, in the former he is singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions. Unlike the cityscapes of Ram Kumar which ooze a silent melancholy and flare warmly form amidst the gloomy shadows of all-consuming time, Souza's cityscapes are the congealed visions of a mysterious world. Whether standing solidly in enameled petrification or delineated in thin colours will calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors.".....J. Swaminathan - LKC C/o March, 1995.