Important Notice

From the late 1940s onwards, Souza made gouaches intermittently. In 1965, he made a series of small-format works on paper, many of which were human figures. These works were executed as a short-lived experiment with gouache. The present work, a very rare and unique landscape that was a part of the gouache series, reveals patience and meticulousness, highlighting his skill and exacting nature.

Perhaps its significance could be seen in... From the late 1940s onwards, Souza made gouaches intermittently. In 1965, he made a series of small-format works on paper, many of which were human figures. These works were executed as a short-lived experiment with gouache. The present work, a very rare and unique landscape that was a part of the gouache series, reveals patience and meticulousness, highlighting his skill and exacting nature.

Perhaps its significance could be seen in context of his other landscapes. Souza's landscapes and cityscapes were not spared his signature thick lines and hasty painting, which heightens the importance of this work all the more. His landscapes in the 1960s appear to be crammed with distorted houses. Chaos permeates these works. Seldom do they appear in neat rows. The lines are thick and the brushwork indicates forceful, disorganised strokes. Souza progressively moved to densely populated canvases obscured by too much detail. This work departs from his usual style and offers the viewer a glimpse into a different side of the artist.

Here, Souza abandons his irreverent and jarring compositions and the thick strokes with which he created them. He has opted for even, smooth lines that carefully demarcate the structures from each other and the ground. Structure and colour seem the primary preoccupation here: the facades are rendered in a uniform application of colour in parallel bands. Details are included, but are strategically limited to only a part of the structure closest to the sun. The most striking aspect is Souza's decision to balance the flatness of colour in the structure with a gloaming sky whose colours gently blend into each other. Depth is conveyed through the division of the area into precise sections: the green field, the buildings and the sky. Although these buildings echo the cubist construction of Souza's earlier landscapes, theirs is a more restrained architecture defined by the planes of saturated colour rather than Souza's signature use of bold outlines.

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