Mumbai: The face is long, cheekbones high and eyes bulbous. With thin lips pursed together as if in displeasure, the man gazes stonily at you. ‘Head of a Man’—a 1961 painting by the legendary iconoclast cum ‘enfant terrible of modern Indian art’ F N Souza— will soon turn the spotlight back on the rebellion that marked art in post-Independence Mumbai.To be displayed in India for the first time by DAG at Art Mumbai, an art fair at Mahalaxmi Racecourse between November 17 and 19, Souza’s oil-on-fabric artwork will refresh memories of The Progressive Artists’ Group of 1940s Bombay; it joins 32 paintings on display by the group’s other renowned faces: S K Bakre, S H Raza, K H Ara and M F Husain.Believed to be formed by Souza in 1947—a few years after he was expelled from the JJ School of Art for drawing “pornographic” art on the bathroom walls—the group set out to challenge conventions of painting prevalent at the time. “Ganging up in a collective ego is stronger than a single ego,” wrote Souza, outlining the reasons leading to the genesis of the diverse collective whose name was derived from the Progressive Writers’ Group. Unlike the writers who were involved in the socio-political debates of the time, the artists were largely concerned with their own practice. The group—inspired by French impressionism and German expressionism—made an impact with their first exhibition at the Bombay Art Society Salon in 1949, finding takers chiefly in the city’s European residents and the occasional Parsi connoisseur.After Souza moved to England in 1949, he started drawing heads and contorted faces that could be regarded as a metaphor for the human condition or perhaps even a caricature of his subjects. “These heads revealed the extreme decadence and degeneration in society…It became the main language of his art but also modern Indian art,” says art historian Yashodhara Dalmia. “The Progressive Artists’ Group was and continues to be India’s most important and global art collective,” says Ashish Anand of DAG, which is showcasing artworks created by the group’s six founding and seven associate members at Art Mumbai. Highlights include S H Raza’s untitled painting made in Paris, but most likely painted in California, and Bakre’s untitled abstract painted in London, says Anand.
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