Angelo da Fonseca Christmas Story
SAVIA VIEGAS
Angelo da Fonseca, artist and muralist living in the crucial century that ushered in nationalism and revolt against colonial rule, envisaged that Christianity should find a home in post colonial India. The hope was justified as the Indian society was secular and multi-religious. Christians, who were in a minority and had lived in harmonious relations with people of other religions, expressed this sentiment strongly.
Angelo da Fonseca spent the years between 1927 and 1931 at Calcutta and at Santiniketan under the tutelage of Abanindranath Tagore, the nephew of Rabindranath Tagore. Angelo da Fonseca described him as “the greatest artist of the twenties of this century”, who founded an “Indian school of art”, and he was keenly “wanting to be his shisya (student).”
Abanindranath Tagore in a letter wrote to the artist: “You ought to do some Bible pictures in fresco. There are too many churches in India that people ought to get painted the life of Christ on the wall.’ This missive intuitively gave direction to Angelo da Fonseca’s artistic journeys. It was the mission to find a home for Christianity — to inculturate, infusing it with colours, motifs and symbols drawn from the very region where the religion was practiced.
In his artistic career spanning nearly four decades, Angelo da Fonseca followed this vision and its testimony is a prodigious output of nearly 500 works in watercolours, 50 oil paintings, some murals and stained glass. He pursued the mission of creating a new swadeshi lexicon replete with asanas (positions) and mudras (hand gestures) drawn from the living culture of the subcontinent.
The philosophy of the Bengal school to visualize a local atmosphere was clearly reflected in Angelo da Fonseca’s choice of earthen shades, contrasts that created the effect of light of the sun-soaked Indian landscape — terra-verte, lapis-lazuli, blues now warm, sometimes sombre, orange, ochre and yellows. Angelo da Fonseca like the early iconographers pounded some of the colours from rocks collected around Baga and clay from the local fields in Goa, which bonded with Windsor and Newton fixatives, were used with water-colours and for his murals.
Angelo da Fonseca’s flattish visualizations are reminiscent of the icons of Cappadoccia in Turkey where the early icon-makers moved to from Syria after being ostracized for making images of Christ. However, within the rectangular lines that divide the space to form niches, a surprising perspective emerges in his work. The influence of the pre-Raphaelites and the Nazarenes is evident in his work. So also, there is borrowing from Islamic miniaturist and Pahari schools of art.
Angelo da Fonseca’s body of work falls into three phases — 1931 to 1941, 1941 to1951 and 1951 to 1967, the year of his death at 65. The last phase (1951-1967) reflects his most mature period and the emergence of a distinct style. Circles, ovals, arches, niches, surface detail, ethnic weaves, rugs, charpoys and the minutiae of objects of everyday use breathed life to create a pan Indian landscape that pulses through his work. It is also identified by its haloes, dense, luminous, moonlike, sometimes only a cluster of rays and at others, a fine circle etched in a dark line outside of a nimbus, before it becomes a gigantic planetary form around the figure of the Virgin ascending unto the heavens.
The value of Angelo da Fonseca’s work was realized by prominent Indologists like Fr Henry Heras SJ who sought him out and encouraged him to foray into the Indic past by commissioning his travels to several places in northern and southern India. Angelo da Fonseca, in return, acknowledged the debt by declaring the venerable intellectual as his second father. Further support, in an atmosphere where his work was throwing up mixed ripples, came from Fr Mathew Lederle SJ, a German Jesuit, resident in Pune. He hailed from Nuremburg and applied his entrepreneurial skill to propagate the new art of Angelo da Fonseca that addressed the Christian iconography in post colonial time. Fr Heras also introduced Angelo da Fonseca’s work to Leo Pieter Kierkels, the Apostolic Internuncio to India at the time. Cardinal Celso Constantini, secretary of Propaganda Fide in Rome, encouraged the artist through several commissions. Prefect Apostolate J Malenfant, Fr Marion R Batson SJ of the Patna missions, and Fr P J Übelmesser of Mission Procura, Nuremburg were also patrons of Angelo da Fonseca’s work.
From the selected works on exhibit presently, one can gauge the multifarious influences that Angelo da Fonseca draws from to create his pantheon of indigenized and sanctified Christian figures. St Anne is sitting cross-legged on a low stool in position with the young Mary in her lap receiving instructions. Mary is wearing a gagra choli, and around her head looms a trident within a numinous halo. St Anne is wearing Tamilian jewellery and an orange-bordered white sari (see painting entitled The Childhood of Mary). The first few works (Presentation of Mary, 1954, and St Anne and Maria, 1957), each richly nuanced, embody within a religious tradition of Mother India leading Goa to the temple of a pan-Indian culture, somewhat in the fashion of Abanindranath Tagore painting Mother India.
In the work depicting the visitation of the archangel Gabriel bearing tidings (Annunciation / Sadhana 1,1954), the tonal depth is created by the rectangular division of space around the genuflecting Mary, her hands in anjali mudra (folded hands). Note the tilting posture of the Virgin as in a tribanga, characterizing body posture in Indian art and dance. The backdrop screen in orange has block print, a traditional brass diya and a pair of cymbals used in bhajans (chants) lying on the rug
Note the spangled light in the corridor of space behind archangel Gabriel, with the abhaya and gin mudras signifying assurance, instruction of silence and contemplation to Virgin Mary. Mary is adorned with Indic jewellery, sitting in vajrasana (thunderbolt pose) bearing cymbals in her hand and surrounded by a significant halo (Annunciation). The aromatic arc of smoke in another work (Evening Prayers / Sadhana 2, 1961) disappears into the heavens, encompassing Mary in a mood of meditation. The minimalistic division of space, spare detailing, and the womblike encompassing of the body in dhyana (meditation) contrasts with the ecstasy of the Mira-like bhakti trance of Mary, her cymbals askew, the atmosphere behind her in a state of flux, and her mat in levitation as she plays the ektara (Mother Mary, 1956). The mood is ‘unfathomable’ clearly plumbing the depths of fear and fusion before ecstasy and surrender. Atman (individual soul) submits to the will of Brahman (universal soul) in the tradition of bhakti.
The visit of Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth (Visitation, 1954) leads us on to the birth of Christ in a manger. Mary and Joseph sitting crossed legged bow to the infant their hands folded in Anjali mudra (Birth of Jesus, 1954). The wide circular opening behind the scene of nativity represent the earth as well as opens up the interiority of the space to the landscape of the hills above which shimmers the holy star.
The interiors of their home in Nazareth against a rectangular breakup of space in the background, the inner recessed wall showing a window whose barricades reveal a cross- like formation, a diya, an earthen water urn and a cauldron over a burning wood fire provide the backdrop against which the Holy Family are fore-grounded (Nativity of Refugees,1954).
The Holy Family is posited against a pristine backdrop partly reminiscent of Pahari landscapes partly inspired by the gigantic rain trees that have outlived Angelo da Fonseca at the Christi Prema Seva Ashram in Pune where he lived and painted for a good part of his life (By The Wayside, 1947).
The Madonna and Child series are a genre in themselves. The artist once wrote that he liked to paint the Virgin Mother in all her attributes. The epiphany is depicted in the backdrop of the mountains and the sky in a rectangular window seat. The Virgin is depicted with the infant Jesus fore-grounded by the gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh (Epiphany, 1938).
The year 1954 was declared as the Marian year. Angelo da Fonseca received a significant number of international commissions to paint the mother and child series. In these, he visits the working class neighourhoods, laying the Madonna and Child in Maharashtrian domesticity (Mother Mary and Child Jesus, 1964).
The shades of blue and maroon, depicting a krsna-hued Madonna with child forms a radical departure from the other depictions of the Virgin (Mother and Child, 1957). The Madonna suspended in a landscape of stars is seated on a low stool in padmasana position, a lotus in her left hand enveloped in a maroon halo. A blue hue denoting love infuses the Virgin. This work was painted in the same year the artist’s daughter was born. Such details help trace the parallel between his personal life and the trajectory his art was delineating.
The presentation of Jesus in the temple and the flight unto Egypt hint at the varied repertoire of the artist’s oeuvre drawing from the Islamic and Indic cultural repertoires to posit the Holy Family into a landscape unmindful of the nuance of its derivative traditions (Jesus, Mary and Joseph,1942; The Presentation, 1954; and Flight Unto Egypt,1959).
The depiction of the Madonna was influenced by several women Angelo da Fonseca painted — Guita Roy, Alice Pereira, and Sherin Gilani — but the significant muse was his wife Ivy Angelo da Fonseca, whom he married in 1951. In Ivy’s beautiful and strong persona, Angelo da Fonseca found the Indian feminine he pursued in his works. His daughter Yessonda-Delphina, was often the model for the young Jesus and this striking resemblance can be noted in the last painting in the series (St Joseph and Young Jesus, 1962). The tunic that Simeon wears as he beholds the Holy Child has a syncretic quality almost like the robe of Rabindranath Tagore (Simeon in the Temple, 1960). Sometimes a skull cap or a turban delicately marks out Angelo da Fonseca’s quest to find a home for Christian in post-colonial India.
This exhibition of Angelo da Fonseca, Christmas Story, showcases the artist’s work as well as addresses the need to reach out to the community with these paintings — touching the lives of the people for whom he painted so that they can absorb the true meaning of inculturation.
The Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Alto-Porvorim, has organised an exhibition of 25 selected paintings of eminent Goan painter, Angelo da Fonseca.
The Exhibition has been titled ‘Angelo da Fonseca Christmas Story’ and has been curated by artist Savia Viegas from Carmona, Goa.
Noted Goan writer and Padma Shri awardee, Dr. Maria Aurora Couto will inaugurate the Exhibition on 6 December 2011 at 5:30 pm at the Xavier Centre of Historical Research. Mrs. Ivy da Fonseca, wife of Angelo da Fonseca, will be the Guest of Honour.
Angelo da Fonseca Christmas Story will be available for public viewing from 6 December 2011 to 6 January 2012. The Exhibition will be open from Monday to Friday from 10 am to 5 pm.