Important Notice

Souza’s treatment of the nude and the erotic varied greatly over the decades, from the first work he painted on his mother’s ironing board to his late canvases, among which the present lot figures. While some of his women were rendered as dark and disfigured goddesses, lashing out with claws and fangs rendered in thick black paint, others, with their legs splayed wide, put their hyper-sexuality on flamboyant display. Still others were graceful... Souza’s treatment of the nude and the erotic varied greatly over the decades, from the first work he painted on his mother’s ironing board to his late canvases, among which the present lot figures. While some of his women were rendered as dark and disfigured goddesses, lashing out with claws and fangs rendered in thick black paint, others, with their legs splayed wide, put their hyper-sexuality on flamboyant display. Still others were graceful and reticent, seeming to be full of innocence. This extreme variance mirrored the artist’s multiple sources of inspiration, which ranged from the voluptuous forms of ancient Indian temple art to the early works of Gauguin and Picasso and Spanish Romanesque portraits.

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 figure on the wall. Shortly after, he was expelled from his Jesuit high school for the ‘pornographic’ drawings he decorated its restroom walls with. However, Souza remained undiscouraged by the adverse reactions his work drew, and continued to express his love and fear of sex, the original sin, through his art.

In this 2001 canvas, painted during a live-work program in Laguna Beach, California, Souza leaves savage disfiguration aside to affectionately render a large, voluptuous nude against a vivid mustard backdrop. Although she is curvaceous and bejeweled, and her brown skin flawless, the subject’s blank expression leaves the viewer unsure and disconcerted.

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