Grosvenor Gallery presents Francis Newton Souza – Centenary Exhibition by artist F.N. Souza. He was born in the Portuguese colony of Goa to Indian parents. Along with a group of like-minded contemporaries, Souza established the Progressive Artist’s Group, having their first exhibition at the Bombay Art Society in 1949. The works on show were evidence of the group’s desire to break with the current political and creative rhetoric of the time. Instead of duly painting in the restrictive and conservative European style promoted by India’s academic art institutions under the Raj, the PAG looked to their own Indian culture for inspiration, not viewing such arts as Hindu sculpture or Mogul painting as indigenous craft but high art form.
“Renaissance painters painted men and women making them look like angels. I paint for angels, to show them what men and women really look like.”
F.N. Souza quoted in 1960 by Edwin Mullins
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