Souza in the 40’s

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ESTABLISHMENT
OF THE PROGRESSIVE
ARTISTS’ GROUP
The founding members of ‘The Progressive Artists Group’ were Newton, Raza
and Ara. However, through the invitation of one extra member each, the group
grew to include Maqbool Fida Husain, Hari Ambadas Gade, and Sadanand
Bakre. Others who became associated with the group included Manishi Dey,
Ram Kumar, Akbar Padamsee, and Tyeb Mehta. Later in 1950, Vasudeo S.
Gaitonde, Prafulla Dahanukar, Krishen Khanna and Mohan Samant joined
the group.
Newton, who had invited Husain, had first met him painting billboards for
the Indian film industry. As he describes in The Patriot Magazine in 1976.
“Husain was standing in scaffolding, holding a palette in one hand and a large
brush in the other, some more brushes in his mouth, and a pot of paint dangled
from its handle on one foot. The hoarding he was working on was Sorat Modi’s
Sickander or Shantaram’s Adml - perhaps both together, but he was going about it
like Tarzan: swinging! Considering that he sported a long beard and covered his
head with a bora cap, and he wore bell-bottom and pyjama slacks with shirt and
waist coat, this was some Maulvi -Tarzan spectacle even for Bombay.” 21
It was however, after seeing his talent at the Bombay Art Society, that
Souza sought him out as a member.
The founding six members would meet regularly to discuss their ideas
and visions. As Newton laments ‘we came together through mysterious chemical
reactions. We would be talking all night. We used to go and sit at Backbay and talk
and talk…We used to talk about what art should be and how it should be done.
Without seeing any model of Art and how it should be done, without doing it we first
formulated it in speech.” 22 Newton was given the job of secretary, Gade treasurer,
Ara PR, and Raza was given the task of attracting new clients to
their exhibitions. Raza recalled that:
“what we had in common besides our youth and lack of means was that we hoped
for a better understanding of art. We had a sense of searching and we fought the
material world. There was at our meetings and discussions, a great fraternal
feeling, certain warmth and a lively exchange of ideas. We criticized each other’s
work as surely as we eulogized it. This was a period when there was no modern
art in our country and a period of artistic confusion.” 23
The Progressive’s made several trips to different places to widen their artistic
knowledge and experiences. Newton and Husain visited Delhi to see the ‘India
Independence Exhibition’ at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi in 1948 , an
exhibition which later travelled to Burlington House in London. London, to
which the Bombay Selection committee had loaned two works by Newton and
one work by Raza for the Modern section. There they were strongly influenced
1947—1948
by the Khajuraho sculptures on display, something which is particularly evident
in Newton’s classical full breasted female forms in many of his works. Alkazi
called the exhibition “the first presentation after Independence of the Indian point
of view and was a watershed.” 24
Because of Newton’s close link to the Communist Party at the time, the first
meetings of the PAG were often held at the premises of the Party, also known
as the Friends of the Soviet Union Office. Geeta Kapur talks of his conversion
to communism:
“ Being by temperament a fighter every pang of humiliation he felt as an individual
or as a “native” roused him to retaliation and attack. He converted this fighting
spirit into revolutionary politics. The Party welcomed him on the popular front, and
his art of the period did indeed merit enthusiasm from the comrades. He devised his
figures according to class-types, showed them in their environment, labelled them
with appropriate titles. He depicted the plight of the poor (Goan peasants, Bombay
Proletariat); he exposed the villains (Capitalists in particular, the bourgeoisie in
general). He painted, moreover, in an idiom belonging broadly to the Social Realist
category and was more than willing, with the help of the party organization, to
show his paintings in the working class colonies of Bombay. He was hailed in the
People’s Age, the Party paper, as a patriot and a revolutionary.” 25
His paintings of 1947 indeed show signs of his Communist leaning. His work
‘ The Family’ was originally titled ‘ After Working in the Field All Day We Have No
Rice to Eat ’ and then ‘The Proletariat and the Plutocrat’s Dinner’. It depicted the
most downtrodden of Indian society, the untouchables. The political message was
abundantly clear. As Goetz pointed out, Newton “ thought it his duty to place his art
in the service of propaganda to alter such deplorable conditions. No wonder he believed
that this should be an art of the people for the people.” 26
Despite producing such incendiary works, Newton won an award at the
Bombay Art Society Exhibition. The ‘rebel’ even settled down to marry Maria
Figuereido in 1947 who he had met at this first solo exhibition. She was also from
Goa, born on the 18th March 1914 in Margoa, Salcete. She was from a landowning
family, notably one which had two large properties, rice fields and a coconut
grove. Over the coming years, she would be one of Newtown’s greatest supporters
and would spend much of her time promoting the work of The Progressives.
The Progressive Artist’s Group began holding informal exhibitions in the
Kings Circle. Some encouragement was given to the group when Goetz of the
Baroda State Museum invited them to hold an exhibition of their works at the
Baroda State Picture Gallery on the 21st February 1949, even purchasing a few for
the museum.
However, the defining Progressive Artists’ Group exhibition was their
inaugural show at the Bombay Art Society Salon, between the 8th and 13th July
1949 . It was opened by Dr Mulk Raj Anand, Ph.D, and made possible through
the backing of the group of refugees from war torn Europe the PAG members
had met towards the beginning of the decade - Langhammer, Leyden and
Schlesinger.
Newton’s works for the show exhibited none of the strong political leanings
his earlier works, a reflection of the PAG’s abandonment of their manifesto of
1947 , as they note ‘we have changed all the chauvinist ideas and leftist fanaticism
which we had incorporated in the manifesto at the inception of the group. ” 27. Newton
indeed left the Communist Party saying “I left the Communist Party because
they told me to paint in this way and that. I was estranged from many cliques who
wanted me to paint what would please them. I don’t believe that a true artist paints
for coteries or for the proletariat. I believe with all my soul that he paints solely for
himself.” 28 Likewise, as Jag Mohan says in a newspaper article from the time, ‘it
is not a school in the sense in which other schools of painting are known. Each member