F.N Souza

​

Francis Newton Souza – maverick, enfant terrible and I can add some more unsavory adjectives to describe the man, but I am sure you get the picture. And as pictures speak more than a thousand words, here is one – his face is like one his works, with multiple eyes and the sharp lines!

​

Despite being feted as the leading figure to represent Modern Art from India and making an impact in London’s art scene in the 1950’s and 1960’s – Souza was never conferred with a Padma Shri or any award by the Government of India! By comparison

​

M F Husain was conferred with a Padma Shri as early as 1955 and so did S H Raza, and they all started their career at the same time. Souza received international awards like, John Moore Prize in 1957, a scholarship from the Italian Government in 1960 and the Guggenheim International Award in 1967.

 
Awards and recognition apart Souza is credited with evolving unique use of material – chemical alterations on paper, where he used glossy colour (I am specifying as we are referring to the late 1950’s and early 60’s) magazine ads on which he altered the images using chemical mixes to create a new visual. Of course he claimed that he was the first to do so, but this is the undocumented world of artists so lets not split hair. Another innovation that he jumped headlong into was the use of acrylic paint, again in the 1960’s and he loved the speed in which the paint dried and the luminosity of his colours. 

We believe that collaborations between artists as a recent thing, but Souza had aced this too, in the 1965 he worked with Mohan Sharma who belonged to the traditional school of Nathdwara from Rajasthan but who had also trained at the Sir J J School of Art, which culminated in an exhibition in the same year at the Taj Art Gallery, Mumbai. What this also points to, is that though Souza moved to London in 1949 he kept returning, whether to complain about the art scene in India, argue with his friends, detox or exhibit the connection remained, so much so that he passed away in 2001 in Mumbai. 

Souza’s legacy is maintained by one of his daughter’s in The Francis Newton Souza Estate.  

The highest price fetched by Souza’s work is ‘Birth’, 1955 (oil on board), which was sold at Christie's auction for US 4.1mn in 2015. The work is reportedly sold by Tina Ambani’s Harmony Arts Foundation, which had purchased the work in 2008 for $2.5mn.