Evolution of the Indian Modernist Painter
Prinseps, in collaboration with Dhoomimal Gallery, presented F.N. Souza: A Continuum. A landmark exhibition A landmark exhibition celebrating F.N. Souza's Centenary Year. Opening on March 25, 2025, in New Delhi, the exhibition invited viewers to look beyond the myth and into the inner world of one of India’s most influential modernists.
This first-of-its-kind, research-driven show brought together rare artworks, archival materials, and the deeply personal histories that shaped Souza’s artistic vision. The exhibition also featured works by his daughter Keren SouzaKohn and grandsons Solomon Souza and Ruben Souza, tracing a living, evolving legacy across three generations.
Far from a conventional retrospective, F.N. Souza: A Continuum turned its gaze inward. It moved past the familiar narratives of rebellion and the oft-repeated enfant terrible label to reveal the complex, layered life of an artist too often defined by sharp lines. Rather than mythologize, it humanized, offering an intimate portrait of Souza as thinker, lover, writer, father, and fierce innovator. The exhibition traced the evolution of his identity through his relationships, literary fascinations, artistic obsessions, and the many geographies that shaped him.
To mark the opening of the exhibition, a special panel discussion titled Beyond the Enfant Terrible: Expanding the Discourse on F.N. Souza brought together Yashodhara Dalmia, Uday Jain, Indrajit Chatterjee, Souza’s daughter, Keren SouzaKohn and grandson Solomon Souza. Contributions from artist and J.J. School of Art alumnus Jatin Das in the audience and Theatre Actor and Scenic Designer Amal Allana further enriched the conversation, adding personal and critical perspectives to the legacy of Souza. [Watch the full panel discussion here.]
The panel discussed Souza’s literary leanings, complex spirituality, and cross-cultural influences. More than a retrospective, F.N. Souza: A Continuum was the culmination of over two years of research, an attempt not just to exhibit Souza, but to re-read him. The exhibition moved beyond the often-repeated narratives of rebellion and notoriety to reveal the full range of Souza’s artistic concerns, shaped by faith, exile, desire, and reinvention.
The exhibit highlighted the political and artistic climate of the 1940s in India, setting the stage for F.N. Souza’s early career and how he co-founded the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). It underscored the influence of anti-colonial movements such as the Quit India Movement, with prominent figures like P.C. Joshi, Mulk Raj Anand, and the Communist Party of India playing pivotal roles in shaping a politically conscious art scene. Additionally. The influence of European émigrés such as Walter Langhammer, Rudolf von Leyden, and Emanuel Schlesinger was significant in the development of modern Indian art. They introduced Indian artists, including F.N. Souza, to European avant-garde movements.This environment fostered Souza’s dissenting voice and vision, influencing his trajectory before he departed for London in 1949.
Kiran Nadar, Indrajit Chatterjee and Uma Jain
While Souza’s debt to European modernism, especially Picasso, has long been acknowledged, A Continuum focused on what Souza did with those influences. Like Picasso, Souza was drawn to African masks. But rather than mimic, he internalized their language, channeling it into his Heads series. These were not mere stylistic exercises; they became meditations on alienation, social masks, and inner fragmentation.
Souza’s artistic evolution was shaped as much by literature as by art. While Picasso influenced his visual vocabulary, the F.N. Souza Kafka influence is evident in how the writer’s themes gave form to the inner unrest that defined Souza's work. Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915), with its image of Gregor Samsa transformed into an insect, struck a chord with Souza, resonating with his feelings of estrangement, class alienation, and psychological fragmentation. This influence surfaced not only in Souza’s grotesque, mask-like figures but also in his writing, most notably in his 1955 short story The Nirvana of a Maggot, published in Encounter by Stephen Spender, in which he described his origins as “a maggot on a dung heap,” echoing Kafka’s themes of degradation and identity. Works like Nude Metamorphosed into Insect (1957) and Metamorphosis (1968) visualize this descent into the monstrous, blending insectile anatomies with the raw intensity of African masks. Across these works, Kafka offered Souza a language for exile, rejection, and transformation, one he carried forward through both pen and brush.
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Another pivotal figure in Souza’s evolution was Liselotte Souza née Kristian (ancestry Kohn) - Czech-Jewish émigré and RADA graduate. She was his partner, intellectual interlocutor, and muse. Their home in London was a space alive with music, ideas, and artistic dialogue. Through Liselotte, Souza entered a new creative phase, painting cultural personalities like Louis Armstrong and Igor Stravinsky, whose own radical vocabularies mirrored his own. These portraits, rich with sound and rhythm, spoke to a broader cultural engagement, moving Souza’s practice beyond Goan churches and Temple Dancers into the sonic landscapes of modernity.
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F.N. Souza’s religious art remained a recurring axis in his work, not as doctrine but as material.. Raised in a devout Catholic household in Goa, Souza never entirely rejected the faith. Rather, he held up its symbols: Man in Tunic, Crucifixions, Last Suppers, Pietà, and interrogated them. The exhibition framed these works not as heresy, but as reckoning: visual theologies marked by longing, conflict, and critique.
One of the show’s most unexpected revelations was Souza’s drawing of a 12th-century mithuna sculpture from Puri, recreated from a photograph in Philip Rawson’s The Art of Tantra. Long believed lost, the sculpture lived on in Souza’s tracing, a quiet act of preservation and transformation that perhaps responded, knowingly or not, to Rodin’s The Kiss. Here, Indian sensuality and European form met in a single line.
Kiran Nadar and Indrajit Chatterjee
The exhibition also revealed a quieter, lesser-known side of F.N. Souza as a devoted father. Through intimate letters written to his daughter Keren SouzaKohn, a portrait appeared not of the bold provocateur but of a man gently bent over his desk, signing off with “Lots of love and kisses. Write me.” Known for his literary talent in works like Nirvana of a Maggot and Words and Lines, Souza used letter-writing to stay connected to those he loved. These handwritten pages softened the harsh edges of his public persona, revealing tenderness and longing. Beyond the ink, the exhibition welcomed viewers into the small, sacred rituals of Souza’s domestic life: Keren sitting beside him as he painted, often on his haunches, with the canvas laid flat before him. In these details, quiet, unremarkable, and human, the exhibition reframed Souza not just as an artist or iconoclast, but as a loving father and a man of many expressions.
What emerged through F.N. Souza: A Continuum was not just an artist who challenged norms, but one who constantly remade himself, who absorbed the world and reimagined it on his own terms. Through a selection of rare F.N. Souza artworks, archival footage, and personal letters, the show revealed a side of Souza rarely seen: introspective, cerebral, tender.
Today, his legacy continues through his daughter Keren SouzaKohn, her son Solomon Souza, and nephew Ruben Souza, each drawing from his immense creative force in their distinct idioms.
