Untitled (Landscape)

In this landscape painting, Souza effectively demonstrates the inherent tension between nature and civilization. His works, which often depict the sky as an equally viscous force against the buildings and trees, become treatises on the conflating powers of god, man and the natural world. Rooftops cut sharply into the sky, suggesting not harmony but a tumultuous battle between dissonant elements, emphasized through the violent brushstroke and dramatic palette. Juxtaposing naturalism with reverential expression, Souza represents the landscape as a sublime scene of primordial power. This work is abstract perhaps not in appearance but in its exisential undercurrents, the abscence of humanity at such an epicenter of civlization, where religion, modernity and nature coexist in a perpetual struggle.


Jagdish Swaminathan describes Souza's cityscapes as "singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions." They are the "congealed visions of a mysterious world. Wheather standing solidly in enameled petrification or delineated in thin color with calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors." (J. Swaminathan, Souza's Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, 1995, p. 31)