Important Notice

This work comes at a significant period in the life of Souza – at a time when Souza, as an Indian artist, was striving to make a name for himself critically and commercially in London. This piece was painted in 1956, a year after the artist finally broke into the London art scene with his first solo exhibition at Victor Musgrave’s Gallery One – a small space on Litchfield street. At this time, Souza’s autobiographical essay about Goa, Nirvana of... This work comes at a significant period in the life of Souza – at a time when Souza, as an Indian artist, was striving to make a name for himself critically and commercially in London. This piece was painted in 1956, a year after the artist finally broke into the London art scene with his first solo exhibition at Victor Musgrave’s Gallery One – a small space on Litchfield street. At this time, Souza’s autobiographical essay about Goa, Nirvana of a Maggot, had just been published in the journal ‘Encounter’. With acclaimed poet Stephen Spender as the editor, Souza was making waves in the literary world as well.

This particular piece is also significant within Souza’s oeuvre in terms of its style. Though Souza employed his characteristic heavy impasto and black lines in its creation, this work is particularly noteworthy for its lack of violence and disfiguration of the central character. Combining his iconic townscapes with his equally infamous heads, it seems at first that Souza has forsaken the eroticism, satire and religious commentary that were his trademarks of subversive narration at the time, for a simple man about town, dressed in a suit and tie.

However, on closer inspection, it seems the artist is indeed making a comment in this work, though implicitly rather than through coarse satire. This piece captures the circumscribed life of a town dweller who, wearing a defeated expression, seems subsumed by the dreariness and drudgery of everyday life over which he can exercise no control. Souza evokes a number of emotions through this man – compassion and anger to name a couple – as well as introspection about the viewer’s own life.

According to Edwin Mullins, who published the first monograph on Souza in 1962, his portraits like the present work are “full of apparent contradictions: agony wit, pathos and satire, aggression and pity. Their impact is certain but few people are able to explain what has hit them” (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Ltd, London, 1962, p39).

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