100 years after his birth, Francis Newton Souza’s art is seeing the resurgence it deserves

Francis Newton Souza’s story is marked by rebellion and determination. Souza, who was born in Goa, India in 1924, was expelled from school twice as a youth before ultimately deciding to become an artist. Opting to join the company of other radical artists and revolutionaries, he joined India’s Communist party in 1947 and co-founded the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). However, Souza quickly grew frustrated with the lack of patronage and aesthetic identity in India. Looking for acceptance, he left his native country in 1949 bound for London.

For nearly two decades, Souza would remain in the English capital. It was during those years that, through challenge and hardship, the artist would define his career and cement his legacy as one of India’s most celebrated modern painters.

In honour of the artist’s centenary, Christie’s is proud to present Francis Newton Souza: The London Years, Masterworks from the Collection of Navin Kumar, on view in our New York gallery from 13–18 September. Chronicling his time in London, the exhibition features 26 artworks from the groundbreaking years Souza spent in Europe.

All works in the exhibition come from the collection of Souza’s long-time patron and friend, Navin Kumar. The pair met in India in the 1960s at a gallery that was run by Kumar and his brothers. Souza would maintain a close friendship with the whole family throughout his time in India, Europe, and North America. ‘After they met, Souza became a mentor to Kumar,’ says Nishad Avari, Specialist and Head of Department for South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art.

A difficult reality

‘Souza struggled during his first few years in London,’ says Avari, noting that at one point the artist had all but given up on finding success in the English capital — in fact, a lack of funds was the only thing that kept him from returning to his native country.

While still in India, Souza had envisioned London as the paragon of art and culture, its population composed of the audience for which he had been longing — India, he felt, was a ‘country that despises her artists and is ignorant about her heritage’.

But when he got to London, he found a city devastated by World War II. Food was still being rationed, and art was not a priority, to say the least. ‘He ended up staying in a hostel in exchange for doing chores,’ says Avari, ‘and was supported financially by his first wife Maria, who was a dressmaker.’

Of his time in London, Souza himself would later recall, ‘I came to this country in 1949 and lived in dire poverty for six years, until 1954. Six years of starvation, rags and cigarettes picked up from the gutters. But somehow I kept on painting and never took a job.’

Despite the precariousness of his situation, Souza enrolled in London’s Central School of Art. He relied on the support of friends and the small pay from writing articles for Indian periodicals. Bouncing from a hostel — where he sometimes exhibited works in the dinner hall — to his friend’s houses, Souza began to establish his vision.

A new Indian Art

Against the backdrop of crumbling brick walls, Souza began to synthesize classical Indian paintings with modern European masters. And, after his early works — which explored more controversial themes including sex and religion — failed to attract galleries and patrons, he began to venture into the European continent, immersing himself in cities such as Paris, Amsterdam and Rome.

In Paris, he reunited with some of his former PAG colleagues, including S.H. Raza and Akbar Padamsee, and met Pablo Picasso for the first time. Souza was profoundly influenced by his meeting with the Spanish master, whose art he had once scraped money together to study reproductions of in Mumbai. Both founding members of the leading modern art movements within their respective countries, Picasso and Souza shared similar visions and temperaments, eventually earning Souza the moniker ‘Indian Picasso’.

Souza began to establish his name through his figurative works. Immersed in London’s vivid post-war underground, he painted archetypes that represted the human condition culled from the colourful cast of characters around him, as well as the quintessentially English figures that became part of daily life, such as Untitled (Elder) and Footballer (1952) from Christie’s exhibition.

Though his big break came in 1955 with a landmark show at Gallery One, the years that preceded it defined the aesthetic direction of his oeuvre for the rest of his career. How he portrayed his subjects embodied the fractured sensibility of the post-war period, as it encapsulated the genuine — if not hesitant — optimism about the future, as well as the fresh memories of war and its horrors.

As he continued to develop his craft, Souza's grotesque figures and heads not only became commentary on the state of human society, but also showcased his remarkable skill as a draughtsman. Another work from the exhibition, Manufacturer of Nuclear Weapons (1962), directly makes this link. Underscoring the sociopolitical and scientific developments that stood at the fore of the Cold War, Souza’s figures turned more monster than men with their bold, sinewy visages and plethora of eyes.

Changing fortunes

It was the poet and art critic Stephen Spender who had introduced Souza to Victor Musgrave, whose Gallery One brought Souza’s work into the limelight. Gallery One was the perfect fit for the rebellious Souza, who in 1966 described the space as ‘the most controversial gallery in London’.

John Berger, author of Ways of Seeing, reviewed the Gallery One exhibition praising Souza’s works as ‘triumphant and yet entirely uncultivated’. Two years later, David Sylvester, one of the most influential critics of the time, would compare the expressionistic and grotesque forms of his paintings to those of Graham Sutherland and Francis Bacon.

This critical success brought financial success as well. Souza was soon being paid a monthly stipend by a benefactor for a regular supply of his paintings, and with gallery representation saw his paintings exhibited in, and purchased by institutions around the world.

Souza’s life is pockmarked by rebellion and revelry. From his radical beginnings in India to his artistic themes, which often bear visceral symbology relating to Christianity, he always sought to disrupt. His time in London began with very little, and threatened to leave him with even less, but by 1967, he had become an internationally acclaimed artist that had exhibited throughout Europe. From there, he set off to New York, but it was the London years that made his name.

Plan your visit to Francis Newton Souza: The London Years, Masterworks from the Collection of Navin Kumar – on view in New York during Asian Art Week from 13 to18 September at Christie’s New York.