Portray by Francis Newton Souza
| Photograph Credit score: Particular Association

As Ardour Week looms close to starting April 12, one remembers India’s enfant horrible Francis Newton Souza, considered one of artist Krishen Khanna’s best associates and founding father of the Progressive Arts Group now generally known as India Moderns.

Why does one bear in mind Souza, and the way does he connect with Holy Week? Whereas he was essential of the Church, he was a lover of church music and hymns. When within the metropolis of Delhi through the Nineties he would come to the Church of the Redemption at President’s Property to take heed to the Christmas live performance of the Delhi Christian Refrain together with his greatest pal Virendra Kumar.

Final yr on the residence of a pal, 99-year-oldKrishen recalledhis archives of letters and remembered how they’d go to live shows collectively in London.

In considered one of his exhibitions in 1948 on the Bombay Artwork Salon,Souza had written: “I used to be born in Goa in April 1924, my mother and father are Roman Catholics. I’m an atheist, however I developed a love for stained-glass home windows and church music. First the Gregorian chant and Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ and Beethoven’s ‘Mass in D’, made lasting impressions on my thoughts. It’s Bach nevertheless who made my musical appreciation. He’s hardly ever performed in Catholic church buildings as a result of he was a Protestant.”

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

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

Supplies and compositional readability have been Souza’s greatest allies. He may with pastel and paint create a sequence of Eucharist research within the cadences of cubist idioms and interesting sides. His alternative of color and the cross-hatched textures created their very own synergy. Amongst all these have 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.

Whereas one checked out his priest heads and located them sturdy in addition to resilient, one remembers 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, bear 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.