Important Notice

Souza???s heads demonstrate the many phases of his experimentation with line and form, and result in some of the artist???s most inventive works. Characteristic of Souza???s line work is his use of cross-hatched lines along two parallels, which became a fundamental element in many of his drawings of distorted heads. His skill as a draughtsman is evidenced by this ???nucleus??? of complex stabs and slashes which create a jagged web of complex... Souza???s heads demonstrate the many phases of his experimentation with line and form, and result in some of the artist???s most inventive works. Characteristic of Souza???s line work is his use of cross-hatched lines along two parallels, which became a fundamental element in many of his drawings of distorted heads. His skill as a draughtsman is evidenced by this ???nucleus??? of complex stabs and slashes which create a jagged web of complex patterns. Both human and inhuman at the same time, Souza???s heads are imbued with a fiendish energy and the artist???s spirited defiance of convention. Over time these forms evolved to incorporate loops, whorls, squiggles and, later still, tubular forms that grow off and out of the foundations of the head-shape, moving it further and further away from recognisable humanoid forms.

The immediacy of the figurative attracted Souza, who was compelled to attempt to record both the beauty and decadence of humanity and felt that the figurative, as opposed to the abstract, was the most effective and communicative way to do this. In a 1986 interview, the artist stated: ???The advantage a figurative painter has over the abstract artist is sheer impact: the brute force of an expressionist painting of a large, suggestive naked lady can overwhelm the bravest abstract painting ??? no doubt about it ??? because humans will be humans??? The other most important advantage figurative art has over non-figurative art is that humans can transmit energy to humans through images whereas abstract symbols like the swastika, for example, must be charged with a lot of meaning by tradition before it can be taken to be potent." (as quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 77) At the root of Souza???s heads is an almost primal vision of reality, which shattered the superficiality of everyday life and forced viewers to confront a new truth.

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