F. N. Souza

Francis Newton Souza was born in 1924 in Goa.  He studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay, from which he was expelled for left-wing activities. He was one of the founding members of the Progressive Artists Group in 1948 alongside M. F. Husain, K. H. Ara and S. H. Raza. He left India for London in 1949 and at first struggled to make a living there until 1954, when a piece of writing was published in the literary magazine Encounter, after which his work shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art alongside Francis Bacon and many other British artists. From then on, he was represented by Victor Musgrave’s Gallery One and held a number of solo exhibitions until his departure for New York in 1967. He was a well-Known figure in the artistic milieu of the time, along having his short autobiographical essay Words and Lines published in 1959 and a book-length study of his works by Edwin Mullins in 1962. He exhibited widely in both the United Kingdom and the USA throughout his life. He passed away in 2002.