FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA (1924-2002)

"The Landscapes, architectonic with their 'cubic factors' are ultimately lyrical. There's an unrestrained enthusiasm, a liberty in the application of colour that is applied swiftly with a palette knife, creating smooth pulsating textures."(A. Ludwig, Souza, exhibition catalogue, Dhoomi Mal Gallery, New Delhi)

This landscape painting by Francis Newton Souza oscillates between the lyrical, the sublime and the malevolent. Its corniced buildings, twisting line and piercing steeple like chimneys, suggest not only the Catholic architecture which informed so much of Souza's oeuvre but also reflect his immediate North London surroundings of Hampstead Hill where he lived in the 1960s. This painting epitomises the dynamism of Souza’s works from this period. The bold geometric windows and doors so integral to Souza's landscapes of the 1950s now jostle for space in the picture plane with commanding trees liberated from the structuralism he championed earlier. This painting is a chromatic collision of contradictions; it is gestural yet expressive, controlled yet abstract, representational yet symbolic. This seminal series of landscapes from the 1960s demonstrates the stylistic tensions which made Souza such an instinctive innovator.