An aerogramme from Goa resulted in him sending me some of his booklets, which was a great addition to my Goabooks shelf. Email provided an opportunity to try and write to him. Out of the blue, one day, I got a call on my mobile, telling me that Souza was in Goa, and that I could speak to him, if I wished.
This turned out to be his last interview -- and one of the few -- done a couple of months before his death. Couldn't help asking him for an autograph, and he scribbled a few (treasured) words on a cheap 200-page Indian school notebook. That's the closest thing I'd come to owning a FN Souza signature -- but it sure is valuable to me!
Remembering the man whom I met at the fag-end of his life. We in Goa surely need a road renamed after him, if we can have so many roads named after all the priorities of Lisbon or New Delhi and others ;-) FN
FAKE SOUZA'S IN THE ART WORLD ARE CROWDING OUT THE REAL ONE...
By Frederick Noronha
PANJIM, Jan 29 -- Imitation may be the best form of flattery. But internationally-renowned artist F.N. Souza isn't amused by the fakes carrying his name that are invading the global art-lover's market.
New York-based Souza, a Goan by origin who is considered by some to be the father of Indian modernism in the art world, told this correspondent in an exclusive interview: "There are a lot of forgeries of my paintings (doing the rounds)."
Hardly flattering for an artist whose paintings have commanded high prices. Ranging from 'The Death of the Pope' that was sold for Rs 10,000 way back in 1963 and earned the headlines in 'The Times to India' ... to paintings which are sold for a million rupees or more today.
Says he: "There are also a number of forgeries in Delhi and Bombay. I went to someone's house, and the whole room was full of fake Souza's. The owner was very proud of them too..."
Souza (76), born in the then-sleepy Bardez village of Saligao and taking a break in Goa over the weekend, was an idol of the London art market of the 'sixties.
Curator and manager of Souza's estate, Srimati Lal, says that since 1993 there has been a Souza show every year. In places like London, New York, Ohio, and in Indian metros like Delhi, Bombay Calcutta.
She says on first meeting Souza in 1993 in New York, she "found a genius living a life of a genuine artist in complete isolation in a studio, and not pandering to any pantomime".
Souza was one of the co-founders of the Progressive Artists' Group in the mid-forties. Some of its members went on to make it big. His colleagues included M.F.Husain, Ara, Gade, Bakre, Krishen Khanna, Gaitonde, Raza and Padamsee.
"Most of them were struggling artists at the time. They were united by a common desire to rebel against the past. It was a genuine effort to discover the soul of Indian art, to really locate its contemporary character," the art critic Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni has commented.
From Goa, Souza made it to the heart of Manhattan. And big time too....
But not without a struggle.
His mother was widowed at a young age. She set up a modest tailoring establishment at Hira Building in Mumbai's Crawford Market.
Souza never saw his father, and his sister died of meningitis in the early 1920s, a period which many old-time Goans recall as a time of plague and other killer-diseases here, leading to large-scale outmigration.
"But my father didn't die of the plague. He died a natural death, in his sleep, at the age of 24," Souza recalls. He has recalled elsewhere that he "escaped illiteracy by a hair's breadth".
Says Lal: "I saw Hira Building. It's an old and derelict place. Yet in this two-room flat, so many things happened. (Great Indian artists) Hussain, Ara and Raza were meeting there. That's where everything began (on the modern Indian art scene). Bombay really is a phenomenal city."
"We had began to (talk about our plans) in 1947. Our first group show was in 1948. We got a good response, and the press gave big reviews," he recalls. Souza moved to England in 1949, and those were the days of ship travel.
Souza, expelled earlier by the British principal of the J.J.School of Art in Mumbai prior to Independence, is known as a iconoclast, and was a member of the Communist Party.
His view is that modern art is not just a Western import, but is arguably based on desi traditions too.
"Look at Mohenjodaro. It can be considered as a source for modern art. Indian iconography, showing the human figure with four arms and multiple heads, could be treated as distortion and incongruity. In modern art too, one gets a lot of distortion," contends Lal.
She adds: "Ours is a non-literal society, compared to Western societies which are very literal."
While in Goa, he has been keeping busy producing a Goa portfolio.
After spending three-and-half decades in his New York studio, Souza is well recognised by the rest of the world. But his own home country, India, has yet to acknowledge his accomplishments in a manner that would etch his accomplishments among the greats of Indian origin worldwide.
The non-conformist in him comes out strongly. Would he like to encourage youngsters to enter the art world? "There's no need to encourage anybody. Forces of nature do everything."
How does one shape one's destiny? "You can't. I look at my work as part of my nature. One is born with a certain amount of energy. (Everything depends) on genetics... our destiny is in our genes," says he.
Says Souza: "There has been a great change in the art world in India since we began. Number of art collectors have cropped up, and they're buying art, painting and sculpture." Today, it has also become rather fashionable to own a Souza.
He says: "There's an art boom in India. People from the West come to India to buy... and art dealers from India come to visit me in New York."
Does he write? "Not a lot. One should write if you've got something to say. There's no use doing things from the top of your head," says he.
"I don't paint as much as I used to," says he. "But as I'm getting older, my work get more concentrated. My thoughts are more precise and succinct. I don't experiment and fritter away energy at making tests," says the septuagenarian artist.
Lal however points out that he has held solo exhibits of his work every year, each needing about 50 exhibits.
Lal says Souza's contribution has been creating "two forms which are entirely new". One creates 'chemicals', using a page from a magazine or a poster, rather than paper or canvas to paint on. Chemicals are used to dissolve the inks on the page, and then the whole image is recreated by painting on top.
One show of Souza's "chemicals' was put up in Delhi in 1997.
Lal also says he has "evolved a new figeration" which she calls the "futuristic head". "It is very unique and beyond the modern," says she.
Today, the artist's works are shown in leading international galleries. In the New Tate Gallery, says Lal, Souza's works are hung in the same room as Picasso's. "But a prophet is probably not recognised in his own home," she says, asked about the obvious lack of appreciation in India.
Baptised as Francisco Victor Newton de Souza, he was the son of Jose Victor Aniceto Piedade de Souza from Assolna and Lilia Maria Cecilia Antunes.
Says Srimati Lal, who happens to be the daughter of the creative publisher from Calcutta, P.Lal of the Writer's Workshop, jokes somewhat irreverently: "I"m doing a book on Souza. It's a kind of 'Souza in a Nutshell'. It's not possible to put everything in a very small nutshell... though Souza's a nut."
Souza's book 'Words and Lines', expected to come up on his website soon, describes Goa... as the artist knew it. Souza, when asked to set pen to paper, commented: "Ah Goa, the land of my birth... I'm lucky to be a Goan. When I get annoyed with a Goan, I call him a Goanese! It's great to be in Goa!"
In the past, Souza has quipped: "To be misunderstood is great. But not to be understood is positively grand!"
One headline that this writer recalls goes back to the Indian Express of the mid-eighties. It was a full-page interview with Souza, and quoted the artist as simply saying, "Now that Picasso's dead, I'm the world's greatest".
Visit Souza's work at fnsouza.com (ENDS)
_____ _/ ____\____ Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa \ __\/ \ India T +91.832.2409490 M +919822 122436 | | | | \ http://fn.swiki.net http://goabooks.swiki.net |__| |___| / http://www.bytesforall.net http://www.bytesforall.org \/ ----------------------------------------------------- Sign up for low-volume, high-quality news summaries and updates from Goa at http://newsfromgoa.swiki.net * It's free and volunteer-driven.
