Important Notice

Mirroring both his dry sense of humour and a more serious reflection on the social forces that influence the human condition, Souza's portraits offer us insight not only on the artist's life, but are also a significant source of his social commentary. Drawings like the present lot, for example, offer the artist's take on the 'soullessness' of the upper classes, a theme that the artist pursued in his work in the 1950s. According to Yashodhara... Mirroring both his dry sense of humour and a more serious reflection on the social forces that influence the human condition, Souza's portraits offer us insight not only on the artist's life, but are also a significant source of his social commentary. Drawings like the present lot, for example, offer the artist's take on the 'soullessness' of the upper classes, a theme that the artist pursued in his work in the 1950s. According to Yashodhara 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…The dénouement of the upper classes, with their underlying violence masked by vestments of polite behaviour, is complete…Deploying his faces, as it were, to expose the larger hypocrisy of nations…the essential condition of human beings, of men without redemption" (The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 82-84).

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