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Lot 90

 

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In the present lot, a relatively early landscape titled La Place: Town Square, the artist creates an atmosphere that is desolate, yet expectant. This duality mirrors Souza’s own initial experiences of England, as a poor migrant artist struggling to make his mark in London. It was only in 1955, they year in which the present lot was painted, that the artist finally managed to break into the city’s artistic and literary circles. This new... In the present lot, a relatively early landscape titled La Place: Town Square, the artist creates an atmosphere that is desolate, yet expectant. This duality mirrors Souza’s own initial experiences of England, as a poor migrant artist struggling to make his mark in London. It was only in 1955, they year in which the present lot was painted, that the artist finally managed to break into the city’s artistic and literary circles. This new ebullience is perhaps what the critic Anthony Ludwig saw in the artist’s landscapes of the mid 1950s, when he described them as ‘lyrical’. “The landscapes, architectonic with their ‘cubic factors’ are ultimately lyrical. There’s an unrestrained enthusiasm, a liberty in the application of color that is swiftly applied with a palette knife, creating smooth pulsating textures” (Anthony Ludwig, Souza, Dhoomimal Gallery exhibition catalogue, not paginated).

Here, a barren tree with spines for leaves shares the foreground with a couple of uninviting, windowless houses. Behind them, a dark and dilapidated church-like structure looms menacingly on a hill, cold and unwelcoming, reflecting perhaps the artist’s negative opinion of organized religion. All the elements of this bleak townscape, like the clear horizon, are demarcated by Souza’s thick black line, a hallmark of his work across all genres in the 1950s.

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