Important Notice

Lot 47

 

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The following lots (47 and 48) were once part of the personal collection of British writer and art critic Edwin Mullins, and were featured in his seminal 1962 monograph Souza-a book still considered critical to the study of the artist's oeuvre.

A leading authority on art, Oxford-educated Mullins spent his career as the art critic for Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph and as a cultural television presenter for... The following lots (47 and 48) were once part of the personal collection of British writer and art critic Edwin Mullins, and were featured in his seminal 1962 monograph Souza-a book still considered critical to the study of the artist's oeuvre.

A leading authority on art, Oxford-educated Mullins spent his career as the art critic for Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph and as a cultural television presenter for the BBC from the 1960s through the 1980s. In that time, he covered important developments in art, within UK and globally, wrote famously about artists such as Van Gogh, Georges Braque and Alfred Wallis, and historical accounts of various cultural events. Mullins' work led him to interact with many artists of that time, from Salvador Dali, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, to India's Souza, who was living in London at the time.

As Mullins notes, between 1949 and 1955 Souza had a difficult time making his career as an artist in London, often shuffling between galleries carrying enormous paintings only to have them rejected. At the same time, he studied drawing at the Central School of Art, giving him reason to continue residing in England. Living in a single room with his wife and baby daughter, "There was not much space for non-essentials, and he [Souza] recalls how a next-door neighbour once complained that he had been throwing drawings in the communal dustbin. Apparently her children had been rummaging, and had found them. They were drawings which, she said 'were not quite nice', and she accused him of being a corrupting influence on the young. Souza was rather flattered. It was the first time anyone in England had taken notice of his work." (Edwin Mullins, Souza, London: Anthony Blond Ltd., 1962, pp. 21, 23)

According to Mullins, "Figurative art presents no problems for Souza because he has succeeded in creating images that are entirely personal, yet recognisable at the same time." (Mullins, p. 36) Lot 47, made in 1956, is a poignant example of Souza's heads. A year before, he created a suite of six ink drawings titled Six Gentlemen of our Times, depicting men who appeared like "a combined portrait of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, sly, evil and at the same time terrifi ed." (Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1978, p. 27)

These anatomically distorted faces-with the eyes placed too high on the forehead, teeth bared and gnashing, and marked by a fury of crisscrossing lines-are emphasised in the present lot. At first glance, the drawing, which is titled Grief and Laughter, appears to show two faces expressing the universal emotions of "grief", as seen in the remorseful expression of the fi gure on the left, and "laughter" in the smiling face of the figure on the right. But further scrutiny reveals that the drawing is not so straightforward. The "laughter" of the right figure seems transfi1xed in horror, and the wide-eyed, smiling expression borders on surreal. However, as Mullins puts it: "Souza's imagery is not a surrealist vision - a self- conscious aesthetic shock - so much as a spontaneous re-creation of the world as he has seen it, distilled in the mind by a host of private experiences and associations... They are full of apparent contradictions: agony and wit, pathos and satire, aggression and pity. Their impact is certain, but few people are able to explain what has hit them." (Mullins, p. 39)

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