Lovers

This work was done by Souza just prior to leaving Mumbai for London in 1949. It was probably completed for the first show of the Progressive Artists Group held in Mumbai in July of the same year. In a photograph showing the original six members of the Group, Lovers is prominently displayed in the background. (The image is reproduced in Yashodhara Dalmia's recently published book, The Making of Modern Indian Art, The Progressives, New Delhi, 2001, fig. 12, p. 44.)

Rudi von Leyden, art critic for the Times of India, wrote of the Group: "They believe that great emotional power and significance is contained in the very element of paintings, namely color and form, and they can be used almost in the pure or abstract state to convey feelings... They have, therefore, discarded to a very large extent the appearance of things, and use, what the layman calls, distorted and 'unnatural' forms." (Rudi von Leyden, 'Indian Painting', The Times of India Annual, Mumbai, 1953.)

Here, Souza depicts the ancient Indian theme of Mithuna or the Lovers in his newly defined language of Modernism. It was one of the first times bright shades of bluish-green and red were used to represent the human body, and certain parts of the body had been deliberately exaggerated or distorted to maximize the impact of the work. The impact of Picasso is evident, and in turn, the influence of Primitive and African art. "Souza's early works, which were inadvertently imbibing these influences, were also incorporating the 'primitive' via the mediation of the West... In reclaiming the 'primitive', then, Souza was virtually re-inventing his own art and that is where his strength lay." (Yashodhara Dalmia, op. cit., p. 98.)