Icons of Goa
Location: Departure Behind Elevator Wall
Ongoing
A series of 4 scrolls
The Icons of Goa is a space to celebrate legends in the arts and culture who are world renowned.
About the Artists
Francis Newton Souza
Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde
Laxman Pai
Carl D’Silva
Francis Newton Souza
Francis Newton Souza (1924 – 2002) was a master of decadence and primitivism, who often experimented with his mediums to come up with a unique end result. His big break as an artist came in the year 1955, with ‘Nirvana of a Maggot’ getting published in the Encounter magazine. He was also possibly the first Indian painter to use acrylic paint in as early as the 1960s. The Indian Modernist M.F. Husain paid a moving tribute to Souza posthumously in 2002.
Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde
Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde (1924 – 2001) is revered as one of India’s foremost abstract painters. An artist of singular stature, Gaitonde was known to fellow artists and audiences as a man of uncompromising integrity of spirit and purpose. A man who never addresses the camera, Gaitonde’s stringent attachment to the codes of painting and the ethics of being a painter distinguished his aesthetic worldview.
Laxman Pai
Laxman Pai (1926 – 2021) grew up in surroundings of surpassing beauty in Goa that fed his artistic ambitions. A painter who did not like dull colors, Pai created a body of work that is as diverse and colorful as life itself. His canvases – reminiscent of medieval Indian art, are densely populated with nature in all her moods and his human characters are always depicted in their environment.
Carl D’Silva
Carl D’Silva born in 1968, Carl is widely acknowledged as India’s Leading Wildlife Artist, and credited for introducing world-class standards in modern Wildlife Art for the first time in India. Once living in Caranzalem, he was internationally recognised to become the first and only Indian to be selected for exhibition by the UK-based Society of Wildlife Artists at their annual juried show London’s Mall Galleries from 1987 to 1991. As a Bombay Natural History Society Member, D’Silva has the opportunity to accompany many wildlife ecologists for field studies across the country. Carl’s forte is the accurate and real-life richness of detail that he brings to his bird plates and canvases. His work is in several collections in India and abroad. Special thanks to Barbara D’Silva and Carl D’Silva.