Important Notice

Souza moved to New York in 1967, leaving behind his successful career in London for a new adventure. Alone in a foreign country, he had to begin from nothing. Ever determined and innovative, it was during this period of seeking more affordable materials and pushing the boundaries of his practice that Souza began to experiment with using chemical solvents on magazine paper. Perhaps influenced by the graffiti and street art subcultures in New... Souza moved to New York in 1967, leaving behind his successful career in London for a new adventure. Alone in a foreign country, he had to begin from nothing. Ever determined and innovative, it was during this period of seeking more affordable materials and pushing the boundaries of his practice that Souza began to experiment with using chemical solvents on magazine paper. Perhaps influenced by the graffiti and street art subcultures in New York, as well as artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol, Souza used chemicals to distort the existing pigments on the printed page.

These alterations resulted in the artist's dark, decisive lines and grotesque heads, as well as landscapes, superimposed on pre-existing images, adding both literal and subversive layers to the interpretation of such works. This "creative destruction" was in alignment with Souza's "life and work [which] has been informed by the systematic destruction of the staid and banal - destruction of the ordinary, vapid conceptions of beauty, colour and form, and the subsequent reconstruction of these tenets in his own heretic, angst-driven, yet paradoxically fluid and easy rendition." ("F N Souza: Important Paintings from the Artist's Private Collections," bosepacia.com, 1998, online)

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