Remembering Francis Newton Souza at 101 years

Painting by Francis Newton Souza
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

As Passion Week looms close to starting April 12, one recollects India’s enfant horrible Francis Newton Souza, one in all artist Krishen Khanna’s biggest associates and founding father of the Progressive Arts Group now often known as India Moderns.

Why does one keep in mind Souza, and the way does he hook up with Holy Week? While he was crucial of the Church, he was a lover of church music and hymns. When within the metropolis of Delhi through the Nineteen Nineties he would come to the Church of the Redemption at President’s Estate to hearken to the Christmas live performance of the Delhi Christian Chorus together with his finest good friend Virendra Kumar.

Last yr at the house of a good friend, 99-year-oldKrishen recalledhis archives of letters and remembered how they’d go to live shows collectively in London.

In one in all his exhibitions in 1948 at the Bombay Art Salon,Souza had written: “I was born in Goa in April 1924, my parents are Roman Catholics. I am an atheist, but I developed a love for stained-glass windows and church music. First the Gregorian chant and Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ and Beethoven’s ‘Mass in D’, made lasting impressions on my mind. It is Bach however who made my musical appreciation. He is rarely played in Catholic churches because he was a Protestant.”

Francis Newton Souza
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

On April 12, 2025 Francis Newton Souza would have turned 101, and this can be a good time to assume again on the life and occasions of this genius andmaverick who believed Nature was the true God.

The first time I met him within the early Nineteen Nineties he spoke of his reminiscences of Konkani hymns sung at mass in Bombay. His love for these reminiscences caused his many work on the Eucharist with the nonetheless lifetime of the chalice. These work at the 100-year celebration by Grosvenor Gallery, London, exhibited in Delhi this January, introduced again recent vignettes of Souza.

Materials and compositional readability had been Souza’s finest allies. He may with pastel and paint create a collection of Eucharist research within the cadences of cubist idioms and interesting sides. His selection of color and the cross-hatched textures created their very own synergy. Amongst all these had been his nonetheless life research of vases with flowers created as a recall of church plenty in childhood. The church buildings then and its many multi-farious architectural nuances too grew to become part of the panorama of his evolution.

Painting by Francis Newton Souza
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

While one seemed at his priest heads and located them strong in addition to resilient, one recollects his contempt for the clergymen who he felt had fallen to deprave methods within the service of the Church.

This April as Holy Week dawns we should with love and appreciation, keep in mind this nice Indian artist who etched the traces of up to date artwork historical past together with his innate love for sacred music in addition to humble rituals born of his Catholic upbringing. Christ’s Crucifixion was a topic he created with verve and vivacity.Golgotha in Goa,was one such basic work supplied at an public sale years in the past.

The author is an artwork curator and critic.