Property from a Private Collection, NevadaAntonio Piedade da Cruz1895 - 1982UntitledOil on canvasSigned 'ACruz' upper left30 x 24 in. (76.2 x 61 cm.)Acquired in Nevada, 2018Antonio Piedade da Cruz, known as Cruzo, was one of Bombay’s most coveted portraitists in the 1930s and 1940s. His portrait of Sir Lallubhai Samaldas won a prize at the Bombay Art Society exhibition in 1929. He was commissioned to paint Field Marshal Sir Chetwode in 1934, Lord Brabourne in 1938 and Lord and Lady Mountbatten in 1948. In fact, as a young man, Cruzo painted a portrait of the First Governor-General of Goa which garnered the governor’s support for admission to the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay. It was here that Cruzo studied under Rao Bahadur Mahadeo Vishwanath Dhurandhar and Professor Gladstone Solomon, passing the government drawing and painting exams between 1917 and 1921.Born in 1895 in Goa, then a Portuguese colony, Cruzo’s move to Bombay to pursue his art education was only the beginning of an illustrious education. In 1921, he worked in Paris before studying at the Academy of Fine Art in Berlin under artists Arthur Kampf, Paul Plontke and Ferdinand Spiegel. Cruzo earned the title of Master Student with a painting called The Force, and he participated in exhibitions across the city and Europe. In 1925, Cruzo exhibited his paintings in Lisbon before returning to India, earning a living from his portraiture.Beyond the figurative style, religious and political symbolism fascinated Cruzo. ‘We see da Cruz as someone who pursued art as both a commercial activity as well as a means to express his anguish towards a collapsing social and political order; an artist who not only drew heavily from the Catholic imagery of his childhood in Portuguese-ruled Goa, but also fashioned a new artistic idiom with which to portray the nation’s new hope for redemption.’ (P. Pillai, ‘Finding Cruzo: Rediscovering Goan artist Antonio Piedade da Cruz’, The Indian Express, 10 July 2016)The present work is an exquisite example of the effortlessly intertwined social and religious themes in Cruzo’s work. With a masterful control of color, Cruzo depicts an idyllic, naked Eve behind a translucent sheet. Her face obscured, she looks down at her empty right hand while lifting a ripe apple towards Adam. Cruzo’s own upbringing in Catholic Goa, may be the reason for this portrayal of the primordial story of Adam and Eve.A long overdue twenty-first century recognition, Ranjit Hoskote curated a major exhibition of Cruzo’s work in 2016 at the Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts in Goa titled, ‘The Quest for Cruzo – A Homage to the Art of Antonio Piedade da Cruz.’