Important Notice

"I express myself freely in paint in order to exist." - F N SOUZA

Painted in 1961, the present lot addresses Souza's continued preoccupation with depicting distorted human forms that began in the late 1940s. Souza's evolving style is seen in the use of circular forms resembling pockmarks to depict eyes and mouth, in place of the gnashing teeth and razor-sharp eyes from earlier works. This technique demonstrated his versatility... "I express myself freely in paint in order to exist." - F N SOUZA

Painted in 1961, the present lot addresses Souza's continued preoccupation with depicting distorted human forms that began in the late 1940s. Souza's evolving style is seen in the use of circular forms resembling pockmarks to depict eyes and mouth, in place of the gnashing teeth and razor-sharp eyes from earlier works. This technique demonstrated his versatility as a draughtsman, prompting critic Yashodhara Dalmia to write: "It is in depicting heads that Souza introduced his most inventive features that bring to the fore his whole painterly arsenal... It is the line that is Souza's most articulate element and he uses it with great agility to encase the form. It is a sharp, clear, virile boundary that separates negative space from positive space and by its sheer virtuosity delineates the object." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "A Passion for the Human Figure," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 93)

It is likely that the black background and otherwise dark colour palette here is an early glimpse into the textured 'Black on Black' series which Souza began later in the decade. Visible in the thick, dark, layered paint around the face in the present lot is the suggestion of some headgear and a hairstyle that harkens to paintings of medieval saints and Catholic iconography that was never far from Souza's consciousness.

By the early 1960s, Souza had already gained widespread recognition in England for his writing and art. He had held a number of successful one-man shows at Gallery One in London, organised by Victor Musgrave. The present lot was made in the same year that Souza held his most impressive solo show at the gallery's new premises in North Audley Street. Writing about his paintings of heads, critic Andrew Forge observed that "Somewhere behind any serious portrait painting there is a wish to gain command of a person... But in Souza you can see the real thing operating, you can see him closing in on his images as though they could save his life, or backing away from them as though they could kill him. Souza himself has said that he has made of his art 'a metabolism. I express myself freely in paint in order to exist.'" (Andrew Forge, "Round the London Galleries," The Listener, 28 November 1957)

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