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Lot 145

For Souza, one of the most fascinating aspects of the Catholic Church was the way in which it represented Christ and its saints as suffering under the burden of all of mankind’s sins. He fondly remembers “the stories of tortured saints” that his grandmother told him as a child and explains that, in addition to these “wooden saints painted with gold and bright colours”, one of the things that always drew his attention in church was “the enormous... For Souza, one of the most fascinating aspects of the Catholic Church was the way in which it represented Christ and its saints as suffering under the burden of all of mankind’s sins. He fondly remembers “the stories of tortured saints” that his grandmother told him as a child and explains that, in addition to these “wooden saints painted with gold and bright colours”, one of the things that always drew his attention in church was “the enormous crucifix with the impaled image of a Man supposed to be the Son of God, scourged and dripping, with matted hair tangled in plaited thorns.” (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond, 1962, p. 40, 42)

These images remained with Souza, and subsequently appeared in many of his paintings from the 1950s and 60s, when he drew much of his inspiration from his feelings about religion, and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. In this piece, from 1957, nails and arrows piercing the subject’s elongated head replace the crown of thorns that Christ wore at his crucifixion. The subject of this portrait, however, does not seem either forgiving or accepting of his torture and martyrdom. Instead, his bulbous eyes seem to question the purpose of this suffering, especially as mankind never seems to learn from it. Turning the teachings of Catholicism around, Souza separated himself from “Renaissance painters [who] painted men and women making them look like angels.” Instead, the artist claimed “I paint for angels, to show them what men and women really look like.” (Ibid, p. 82)

Created with both Souza’s familiar thick outlines and some thinner, more subtle cross-hatching, the man’s mask-like countenance is rendered in a style that borrows from the work of Cubist painters like Braque and Picasso. Influenced by works like Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Souza bestows the figure in this work with sculptural qualities, using light and shadow skillfully to project it beyond its two-dimensional surface and heighten the impact it has on the viewer.

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