Important Notice

The present lot is reminiscent of a series of ink drawings created by Souza in the same year, titled Six Gentlemen of Our Times, where the morphed faces of his later works - symbolising human degradation - had already begun to manifest. According to Geeta Kapur, this series depicted "a combined portrait of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, sly, evil, and at the same time terrified."(Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publications,... The present lot is reminiscent of a series of ink drawings created by Souza in the same year, titled Six Gentlemen of Our Times, where the morphed faces of his later works - symbolising human degradation - had already begun to manifest. According to Geeta Kapur, this series depicted "a combined portrait of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, sly, evil, and at the same time terrified."(Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1978, p. 27) Using cross-hatched lines rather than shading, Souza "achieves an extraordinary mobile visage with flickering nerves, gnashing teeth, and flashing eyes." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "A Passion for the Human Figure," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 83)

In these portraits, Souza seems to satirise the superficial genteel demeanour of the upper classes, attired in formal business suits, which mask their corruption and complicity in suppressing the working classes. According to Dalmia, "A growing skill in expressing the grotesque allowed Souza to dwell on the cunning manipulation by the rich, thereby extending his liturgy of the decadent." (p. 82) Elsewhere, Dalmia elaborated that "it was a damning denouement of an affluent society that had a cankerous serpent at its core. For Souza's piercing vision had seen the embittered, hardened man who had emerged from this society and had represented him bared of all disguises. These were works without redemption." (Yashodhara Dalmia, Souza in London, New Delhi: British Council, New Delhi, 2004, p. 10)

This was a defining period for Souza, whose work had finally gained recognition in London's art circles following the publication of his autobiographical essay "Nirvana of a Maggot," and his subsequent solo show at Victor Musgrave's Gallery One in February 1955.

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