June 8, 2002

Souza liked Karachi. He liked the people and the atmosphere of dynamic chaos he detected in the city whenever he dropped in to show his work at the Indus Gallery, en route to Goa from New York where he was based.

There was nothing haphazard about Souza’s work. Every stroke, every colour appeared to be carefully balanced. Long discarded, the dogma of religion offered an idiom of symbols with which to personify the barbarity of mankind. Souza maintained that every portrait drawn by an artist is a self portrait and appeared as a leitmotif, vulnerable, a penitent with shaven head and tormented eyes. As with all Souza’s work, there was a total lack of clutter.

The first exhibition of his work in Pakistan took place in 1975, at his old friend late Ali Imam’s Indus Gallery. Thereafter we met him at regular intervals throughout the ‘80s until the mid-90s. It was Souza who inspired Bashir Mirza to paint with acrylics, thereby starting BM off on a new art adventure. There were several of his friends in town including writer Victor Anant who had known him in the early London days, and talked of his prowess of a writer as well as a painter.

Mourning the loss of Syed Ali Imam in recent days, one heard that his friend Souza, born in the same year, had also died and were to discover subsequently that the once controversial, high flyer, died in March in Mumbai. It had taken months for the news to filter through to Karachi art circles.

Although Souza had fathered four children from three different women, there were no family members at his interment, just a handful of friends, who turned up to see him off. His own words had been used as an epitaph by fellow artist Namisha: “You go when your time is up: not before and not after and once you go, you will not know that you existed. So what is the worry?”

Born in Goa in 1924, Souza was orphaned at the age of three months when his young schoolteacher father died leaving him to be brought up in a matriarchal society. A much favoured elder sister died in childhood leaving Souza with a burden of guilt that he had survived in place of the family angel.

In Mumbai, where his mother worked as a seamstress, Souza attended St Xaviers’s High School and was expelled for drawing nudes on the washroom walls. Souza always contended that he was not the instigator and in fact had merely corrected another culprit’s weak drawings. In 1940 he joined the Sir J.J.School of Art, and was expelled without a diploma in ‘45 for participating in political activities. By then he was already known in art circles and had shown his work in a solo exhibition at the Bombay Art Society Salon.

Talking of a subsequent painting holiday in Goa, Souza said he could not describe himself as there was no word for ‘artist’ in Konkani, the Goan language. Describing that time he wrote: “I went to Goa and painted pictures of peasants tolling in the fields, fisher folk, priests, Goan women, landscapes. I was amazed to see seeds growing out of the soil forming beautiful shoots, leaves, buds, flowers. These were very interesting subjects for a young artist to paint.”

In ’47, dissatisfied with the state of art in India, which was dominated by classic western academic views or the New Bengal School, Souza became the founder-member and secretary of the Progressive Artists Group, writing a PAG manifesto. Fellow members were S.H. Raza, A.H. Ara, Gade, Bakre and M.F. Husain. It was decided to limit the membership to six “so as not to end up with too much of a stylistic scramble.”

The aims of the group were to form an art movement that reflected the times. In an essay, Devil in the Flesh — Francis Newton Souza, published in ‘78, Geeta Kapoor writes: “By the time the group became operative, Souza had already made a name for himself, having dashed off — after his expulsion from the art school — several hundred paintings. He had exhibited them, sold them and set up a minor conflagration, both with his politics and his images.

In 1949, referring to an ancient Goanese legend that the Evil Spirit hates the sight of a naked man, Souza painted a full length portrait of himself. Although discreetly draped for an exhibition at the Art Society in Mumbai, the painting expedited a police raid on his lodgings during which several artworks were removed in the search for ‘obscene art’.

Souza’s documented statement from that time is often quoted: “I had no wish to bear the artist’s tormented soul, create art in a country that despises her artists and is ignorant of her heritage.” He boarded a ship for England and arrived in London almost penniless.

Victor Anant spoke of those early days and the way that the group that included Parvez and Bakre used to meet. “While Souza theatrically picked up cigarette butts from the road, he kept the artist in Bakre alive with gifts of sculpting materials.”

Souza was commissioned by Krishna Menon to paint a mural for the Indian Student’s Bureau. Menon also arranged an exhibition of Souza’s work in India House. He met Peter Watson, who, in 1954, included three of Souza’s paintings in a group exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Victor Musgrave offered Souza a solo exhibition at the Gallery One in ‘55, and at the same time, an essay written by Souza, Nirvana of a Maggot was published by Stephen Spender in the Encounter. Both the exhibition and the article were well received and John Berger devoted an entire article to the exhibition in the New Statesman. Souza’s work was shown with Picasso; he exhibited in London and Paris where he acquired a patron who collected more than 200 of his works over a period of four years. In ‘58, Souza was one of the five painters chosen to represent Great Britain at the Guggenheim International Exhibition, New York, and his book, Words and Lines was published by Villiers, London. In 1960, Souza availed of a two year Italian Government Scholarship. From 1956 to 1966, Souza was in the foreground of the London Art scene, showing and selling his work he was extensively written about and praised by eminent critics.

At the age of 40 Souza fell in love with a sixteen-year-old girl and leaving his second wife and daughters, married her. To escape the complications of his private life he signed a contract with the American art dealer Eugene Schuster and settled in New York. Souza was soon out of sympathy with the New York art scene, despising much of what was cloaked as Conceptualism. He was invited to show his work in prestigious art galleries on Madison Avenue, and continued to show his work in London but the golden days were done.

In ‘91 Souza wrote about his work in the Illustrated Weekly of India: “Today after several decades of painting I don’t need a subject: my paintings contain their subject. Art is not what you think it is but what the artist thinks it is. Art has advanced that far today! The observer becomes a captive of aesthetics and not of the subject. Subject matter is for the naive who need stories, not for people with taste who can read art! A man of taste does not need the emperor’s clothes.”