Francis Newton Souza

There is craquelure, minor wear and small pigment losses, particularly around the edges of the painting.
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“Souza’s remarkable nudes of the 1950s and early 1960s are not really erotic or beautiful in the usual sense. They were experiments in placing the structure of such figures within a bold painting, whether it had fairly inconsequential background, or the semblance of a landscape.” (A. Kurtha, Francis Newton Souza- Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art, Mapin Publishing & Grantha Corporation, 2006, p. 157). This early nude unveils a bold and extroverted sexuality reminiscent of Ardhanarishvara sculptures from Chola temples. With a face and heavy body like that of a man but highly rounded breasts and wide open legs and moving as though engaged in some ceremonial dance, this nude is almost androgynous. The light background serves to increase the focus on this central figure.

English critic, Edwin Mullins wrote “Souza made a passionate study of Indian art, and was particularly moved by the South Indian bronzes- with their symbolism and their astonishing feeling of movement – and by the sublimely erotic carvings on the temples of Khajuraho. …The emphasis on definitive line to trace the twist and movement of the human body; the impersonal; ritual treatment of sensuality; the tendency to stylize objects so that they become stripped of incidental detail; and the intuitive understanding of how to treat a virtually flat surface in order to create the effect, not of depth but of movement; these are all important components in Souza’s paintings and they stem more or less directly from classical Indian art. (E. Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Publishers, London, 1962, p. 16, 39)

The inspiration of classical sculptures combined with primitivist elements are discernible in this work. It combines all of these references and temperaments in a way that is boldly undeniably captivating to the viewer.