Important Notice

Lot 51

 

Quick Zoom

According to his 1982 diary, Souza met Suruchi Chand, also an artist, on March 18 at the Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi, at a seminar on the ‘Interdependence and Autonomy of the Arts in a Changing World’. About Suruchi he writes: “I will have to collect my thoughts because her intoxicating perfume is still in my head and intoxication makes a scatterbrain, and a scatterbrain cannot recollect the sequences in order”. He added afterwards in the... According to his 1982 diary, Souza met Suruchi Chand, also an artist, on March 18 at the Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi, at a seminar on the ‘Interdependence and Autonomy of the Arts in a Changing World’. About Suruchi he writes: “I will have to collect my thoughts because her intoxicating perfume is still in my head and intoxication makes a scatterbrain, and a scatterbrain cannot recollect the sequences in order”. He added afterwards in the margin, marking the addition with an asterisk at this point in his writing, “She's like swallowing a glass of brandy: the bouquet hit me first and then her spirited conversation began working on me”. His journal entry continues, “I will write at length about this girl, woman, lady, goddess – this intellectual and artist, this lovely wholesome gorgeous broad. She’s excited me; a rare peak. Suruchi has a retinue of men hanging round her on the reak [sic] of her scented pheromones”.

Souza journaled much more about his relationship with Chand, and drew and painted several versions of her in the mid 1980s. In the present lot, painted in 1984, the artist echoes the displaced features characteristic of Cubist portraiture to highlight Chand’s acquaintance with Picasso. In addition, Souza inscribed on the back of this painting, “She is the only woman I know who stayed at Picasso’s house in the South of France”. In the same year, 1984, Souza painted a picture that he called ‘Portrait of Picasso’, currently in the collection of the artist’s estate.

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site