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Lot 36

 

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"Souza is a painter with a powerful and strange personal vision. His paintings are neither primitive nor 'cultured'. They either move you by their stark interpretation of the visual world, or they repel you...He is an image-maker and not an aesthete or a theorist. These are earth paintings, and their impact lies in the artist's power to distort and strengthen the eye's image of this world, and to produce an effect almost shocking in its... "Souza is a painter with a powerful and strange personal vision. His paintings are neither primitive nor 'cultured'. They either move you by their stark interpretation of the visual world, or they repel you...He is an image-maker and not an aesthete or a theorist. These are earth paintings, and their impact lies in the artist's power to distort and strengthen the eye's image of this world, and to produce an effect almost shocking in its intensity" (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Ltd., London, 1962, p. 33).

Offering insight into his reading of human society, Souza's figurative paintings from the mid and late 1950s are considered by many to be some of his most seminal works. As Geeta Kapur observes, "Around 1955 he fashioned for his purpose a distinctive type of head for which he is perhaps best known. It is a face without a forehead, bearded and pockmarked, eyes bulging from the side of the skull…a mouth full of multiple sets of teeth" ("Devil in the Flesh", Contemporary Indian Artists, Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1978, p. 2).

The mid-1950s represent a transformative period in Souza's career as well. Given a grant to work and study in Paris in 1952, the artist established several important connections with Western European gallerists, dealers and collectors. Although Paris wasn't "the genuine Mecca for painters" that Souza imagined, it was there that he met Raymond Creuze, Iris Clert and Harold Kovner, who would significantly propel his artistic career over the next several years.

Kovner, who Souza met in 1956, was his first and perhaps his most important patron. "Kovner, a wealthy American, had come over from New York to find a young artist whom he could take up. He saw Iris Clert, who showed him all her pet abstracts, artist by artist. Kovner remained unimpressed. Finally, and with some reluctance, she let him downstairs and produced several paintings by Souza. Kovner jumped. Within 24 hours he had met Souza, given him money, taken away some pictures, made arrangements for the future, and was flying back to New York. The arrangement was a perfectly simple one. Souza was to keep him supplied with pictures every few months - entirely of the artist's choosing - and in return Kovner would keep him supplied with money. It lasted four years, and Mr. Kovner is now the owner of nearly 200 Souzas. It was a case of patronage of the most simple and practical kind, and needless to say it enabled Souza to live without acute financial worries for the first time in his life" (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Ltd., London, 1962, p. 26).

The present lot, one of the larger 'heads' painted by the artist, was probably part of the initial consignment of paintings that Souza sent to Kovner in New York. Appearing larger than life against the trees in the distance, the subject has the high-set eyes and tubular nose that are distinctive features of Souza's portraits from the period. A grid of cross-hatched lines plotted across his face and neck, make his grill-like teeth almost indistinguishable against his skin. Partially visible at the edge of the frame, is the subject's red patterned smock, suggesting perhaps that he is a representative of the Church that Souza had come to revile. By 'unmasking' what the artist saw as the hypocrisy of so-called 'men of faith', the wealthy and the powerful, these portraits aimed to expose their dark 'soullessness' for everyone to see.

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