Important Notice

After he was expelled from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay in 1945, Souza spent his free time "…studying in libraries, where he discovered for the first time illustrations of classical Indian art and of modern European painting. These were a revelation… Souza made a passionate study of Indian art, and was particularly moved by the South Indian bronzes - with their symbolism and their astonishing feeling for movement - and by the sublimely... After he was expelled from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay in 1945, Souza spent his free time "…studying in libraries, where he discovered for the first time illustrations of classical Indian art and of modern European painting. These were a revelation… Souza made a passionate study of Indian art, and was particularly moved by the South Indian bronzes - with their symbolism and their astonishing feeling for movement - and by the sublimely erotic carvings on the temples of Khajuraho. Both of these made a lasting impression on him, and were largely responsible for awakening the imagination of the young painter" (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Ltd, London, 1962, p. 16).

Symbolic of femininity and fecundity, this nude also draws from Souza's engagement with traditional African art, Byzantine icons, and the work of Picasso and the Spanish Romanesque painters, which he encountered after moving to London in 1950. "Souza's early works which were inadvertently imbibing these influences were also incorporating the 'Primitive' via the mediation of the West…In reclaiming the Primitive then Souza was virtually reinventing his own art and this is where his strength lay…Souza's intervention in bringing modern art 'home' in a definitive manner would remain his most inventive act and in doing so he was unquestionably one of the masters" (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 98, 99).

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