Important Notice

"Women as sex, life and nature are a continuous strain in most of Souza's works and he invests them with age-old powers of fecundity" (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 92).

Like his long relationship with organized religion, Souza's encounter with erotica and the female form was a complex one that had a profound effect on his creative output. As a... "Women as sex, life and nature are a continuous strain in most of Souza's works and he invests them with age-old powers of fecundity" (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 92).

Like his long relationship with organized religion, Souza's encounter with erotica and the female form was a complex one that had a profound effect on his creative output. As a child, the artist watched his mother bathe through a hole in the bathroom door, drawing her nude form on the wall. Shortly after, he was expelled from his Jesuit high school for the 'pornographic' drawings he decorated its restrooms with. Undiscouraged by the adverse reactions his work drew, Souza continued to express his love and fear of sex, the original sin, through his art. From his early statuesque portraits of tribal women to later distorted images of women explicitly displaying their sexuality, Souza's powerful female nudes thus inspire both passion and dread.

The artist's treatment of the female nude and the erotic, however, varied immensely, particularly in his canvases from the 1960s. Still, whether demure or unforgiving, iconic or grotesque, these majestic portraits, with their bold black outlines and thick brushstrokes, never fail to grab the viewer's attention.

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