4 min readJun 12, 2026 07:16 PM IST
First published on: Jun 12, 2026 at 07:16 PM IST
In the glittering landscape of Manhattan, among its celebrated galleries and towering skyscrapers, once stood a modest studio apartment where artist FN Souza spent the latter phase of his life in New York, from 1967 to a few years before his demise in Mumbai in 2002. A pioneering modernist and one of India’s best known artists, painted some of his most compelling works in the quintessential metropolis, experimenting with new techniques, including his celebrated chemical alterations, and also welcoming here a steady stream of collectors, writers and fellow artists who frequented him.
“…This is your daddy speaking from New York. I am on top of the Empire State Building, which is the highest building in the world. It has 102 floors and is 1,250 feet high. Wish you were all up here with me. It is very bright and sunny, and New York is a fantastic and fabulous city full of life and fun. When you are all grown up, you can come to America and visit me. There are lots of supermarkets here with lots of goodies to eat and lots of toys and lots of too much of everything,” he wrote in a letter to his daughters Karen, Francesca and Anya, reproduced on the art platform Prinseps.
Now, more than 20 years after his demise, the contents of that studio are set to go under the hammer at Saffronart’s Summer Auction on June 15-16. The lots include among others, his 67-inch high easel, estimated to fetch Rs 37,600-56,400 with two drawing boards. If a set of three palettes and smock is expected to fetch Rs 37,600-56,400, reference material — including vintage issues of National Geographic magazine and several posters — carry an estimate price of Rs 14,100- 23,500. His projector, designed to ‘develop large-scale compositions” carries an estimate of Rs 37,600-56,400. “I believe that archival material gives you an interesting snapshot into an artist’s life. How he created, worked and presented himself. It is like an old historical document reflecting the artists life,” states Dinesh Vazirani, CEO and co-founder of Saffronart. Speaking about his years in New York, art historian Yashodhara Dalmia adds, “He loved the city, its buzzing dynamic energy and street life.”
Born on April 12, 1924, in the village of Saligao, Goa, the artist often described as the “enfant terrible” of Indian art was known to defy social and artistic conventions and breaking new ground. For years, he also held the position as the most expensive Indian artist, after his 1955 canvas Birth — with a pregnant reclining nude, the self in a priest’s tunic and the cityscape looking out from the window — set a record with $2.5 million in 2008.
FN Souza’s work (FN Souza Studio)
One of the founding members of the famed Progressive Artists’ Group, established in Mumbai in 1947 to discover a new artistic vocabulary for an Independent India, his diverse influences ranged from South Indian bronzes and temple sculptures of Mathura and Khajuraho to Spanish Romanesque paintings and European modernism. The landscapes that he had admired in his native Goa often took the form of lush horizons on his canvases, as did the visual culture of the Catholic church and stories of tortured saints narrated by his grandmother that surfaced as religious iconographies in his work. The distorted figures and grotesque heads were to remain an eternal part of his oeuvre across mediums and metaphors.
Featuring a total of 130 works by leading modern and contemporary artists, the other highlights of the sale include Manjit Bawa’s Untitled (Radha), (estimate Rs 5-7 crore), Krishen Khanna’s Bandwallas at a Wedding (Rs 2.35 – 3.29 crore) and a Jagdish Swaminathan untitled work (estimate Rs 1.80-2.20 crore). The FN Souza artworks on sale include the 1957 oil St Sebastian (Rs 1.88-2.82 crore).
FN Souza spent the latter phase of his life in New York (FN Souza Studio) 
FN Souza’s work (FN Souza Studio)
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