SouzaKohn, daughter of the legendary Indian artist Francis Newton Souza, is a distinguished artist in her own right. Her evocative paintings capture everyday objects and familiar environments, transforming them into dynamic compositions filled with passion and vigour. Born in London, Keren completed her foundation course at Hornsey College of Art and earned a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Ravensbourne College of Art. Her extensive career includes numerous solo exhibitions, with a recent focus on her work with oils.
Keren's art, characterised by its movement and depth, brings life to inanimate objects, revealing perspectives often overlooked. Her use of colours, such as absorbent purples, browns, scorched sienna, and parchment, creates a rich tapestry that speaks to her personal vision and emotional depth. Critics and curators have praised her ability to evoke personal yet universal emotions, stirring the minds of viewers with poignant imagery and vibrant colour.
In this interview, we delve into Keren's reflections on her father's life, art, and influences. We explore how F.N. Souza's early experiences, personal losses, and cultural heritage shaped his artistic journey and how these elements resonate in Keren's own work. Join us as we unravel the legacy of F.N. Souza through the eyes of his daughter, Keren SouzaKohn.
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Liselotte and F.N. Souza with their first daughter Keren
Qs 1. In Souza’s essay "Nirvana of a Maggot," F.N. Souza describes his origin as a 'maggot on a dung heap'. Do you think Souza saw himself as a character like in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," experiencing significant changes in his life as an artist? Also, in his 1957 painting "Nude Metamorphosed Into Insect," how do Picasso's influences and the distorted human forms reflect Souza's thoughts on his identity and origin?
Keren: When my dad lost his father, he felt that he could be a husband to his beloved mother, her suitor and lover. And when my dad lost his sister, he felt it should have been him that perished. He tortured himself with these tormented thoughts. From the ravages of smallpox, my dad’s cratered, pock-marked face, followed by these self-crucifying feelings, and illusions of being a monstrous maverick and solitary pioneer, battling a sea of small-minded, dusty fuddy-duddies. This is delineated as evocative iconoclastic arrow skin punctures and satirical mockery of hypocrisy, much like Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. At that time, Souza’s beloved wife Liselotte, my blessed mother, was a stage and film actress and, like Kafka, also a Czech Jew. Together, my parents shared a passion for redemptive cultured insights and soothing classical music.
Yes, Picasso was my father’s kindred spirit and comrade. They had both joined the communist party, albeit briefly. Souza was already painting in tandem his self-portrait and karma sutra figures with an Indianised cubistic palette. Cubism attempted to show objects as the mind, not the eye, perceives them and was born at the same time as Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the nuclear atom dissection, similarly breaking apart to reveal the inner machinations and hidden truths, like the vivid luminous crystals hiding inside dull rocks.
For Souza, truth is beauty. Exacerbated and emboldened by being the only dark brown man in the room of established artists, my dad was driven by a purpose, a quest for real enlightened truth, and an ambition to create and suffuse the exquisite beauty of his boyhood.
Goa as an emblem of peace and harmony to be waved in the fractured world. His motivation became a righteous crusade to draw attention to the injustices of the haves and have-nots and not for personal vanity. For Souza, the ultimate aesthete, justice is also beauty.
Qs 2. How did the early loss of his father and sister, and the subsequent grief and sickness, influence F.N. Souza's outlook on life and his early artistic expressions?
Keren: Souza had his blue period of honouring the common man, the underdog, the fishermen, field labourers, and a family having their evening meal together in their shack home on the roadside. Souza’s "Rice Eaters" echoing Vincent’s "Potato Eaters." Artists in a vibrational brotherhood, unconsciously championing the same causes because they run counter to humanity therefore resonate. But irritation produces pearls.
Qs. 3. What role did Souza's mother play in his early artistic development while little Souza was in Goa and how did her stories influence his later works?
Keren: A strong, very active, and evocative maternal woman, Souza’s mother Lily Cecilia née Antenues, oldest of three daughters, was self-determined, a homemaker, and provider. Cutting out patterns on her work table and then stitching the material with her sewing machine to feed her family, aroused a deep adulation (and eroticism - Oedipus eat your heart out!) in my father for his blessed single mother until he was 10 when she remarried and had two more children.
Her strong, defiant resilience nurtured him into the depiction of heroines and a lifelong feminist.
Qs. 4. Can you elaborate how Souza's childhood experiences in Goa, surrounded by nature and Konkani Catholic practices, shaped his artistic vision?
F.N. Souza, (Goan Village), 1948, Gouache on paper
Keren: Wandering through narrow winding red lanes flanked by vivid green banana plants, mango trees, and coconut palms, past bright purple, yellow, or blue painted houses, Souza’s wide eyes soaked up the glorious vista. The Church gave my father something to push against while appropriating its beauty but stripped of its preaching for his opulent still lives.
The paradise that is Goa richly feeds the souls of poets and artists.
Qs 5. Souza had a recurring theme of painting heads, particularly religious figures to be questioned. What drove this obsession, and how did it evolve throughout his career?
F.N. Souza, (Head), 1956, Mixed media on paper
Keren: Souza was obsessed with diverse human thought, from the music composer, creative poet, and engineer to the demonic dictator—men separated only by their thoughts.
Everything is in the head. The brain produces thoughts that lead to prejudices and war or love and knowledge. All is contained within the brain housed in the skull.
The evolution of Souza’s heads progressed from heads with no room for a brain, with eyes at the top of the skull, arrows, and pockmarks as stars sunk into the complexion. These talking heads tell fake news and control people with vacant eyes that stare endlessly into the past-future-evil, evolving into featureless heads containing floating amoebae and atoms, ultimately evolving into the "red man" who waves the white flag of peace.
Qs 6. On Souza’s return to Bombay, how did his mother's religious devotion, the expectation to become a priest, and his eventual expulsion from St. Xavier’s College shape his approach to art and authority?
Keren: Souza was deeply antagonistic towards self-appointed nobodies and had his own thoughts and feelings about religion, independent of his blessed mother’s. Some came from literature he devoured and others from inevitable priest abuse of little boy Souza. These tainted memories provided fodder for remedies that he took up with his ammunition paintbrush.
Qs. 7. Based on what you've learned from family stories and records, how did the sights and sounds of Mumbai in the 1940s fuel your father's artistic imagination and shape his early works? (Nirvana of a Maggot) Have you visited Mumbai yourself?
Keren: For a month in 1986, I lived in the YMCA in Bombay. I have fabulous, wonderful memories of the most immaculately laundered and ironed clothing I have ever seen, plus the wonderful smells of lunch in tiffins and the sounds and energy of endless rickshaws, cars, bicycles, cow bells, street markets, and school children remain indelibly vivid in my memory.
I can guess the contrast of this vibrant metropolis with dreamy tropical paradise Goa must have stimulated my dad’s creativity, supplying him with endless compositional ideas.
Qs. 8. How did Souza's political views, particularly his involvement in the Quit India Movement, influence his choice of subjects and titles like "The Proletariat of Goa" and "The Criminal and the Judge are made of the same stuff"?
Keren: "6 Gentlemen of Our Time" was Souza’s political declaration against the ruling elite, depicting them as vacuous grey suits ruining the world with their colourless megalomania. The firing squad of society identifies some for adulation and others for indictment. “Keep the Pope Off the Moon” (1961) is a powerful plea by Souza, portrayed through a magnificent, towering, terrifying painting of a demonic, crazed religious fanatic displaying his ringed finger claws and a pinhead staring down through many eyes with pomp and grandeur. Situated between Bacon’s "Screaming Pope" and the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, Souza nails down the barrier on the bridge, advocating tolerance and coexistence between fiction, fantasy, and reality.
