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Lot 36

 

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Drawing from Romanesque portraits, Byzantine icons, and the works of artists like Soutine and Rouault that he encountered in London's museums and galleries in the early 1950s, F.N.Souza fashioned a figurative idiom that could carry the biting wit and commentary of his portraits from that period. Characterized by an icon-like frontality and clearly defined with thick black lines, his images of saints and suited men, representative of the fall of... Drawing from Romanesque portraits, Byzantine icons, and the works of artists like Soutine and Rouault that he encountered in London's museums and galleries in the early 1950s, F.N.Souza fashioned a figurative idiom that could carry the biting wit and commentary of his portraits from that period. Characterized by an icon-like frontality and clearly defined with thick black lines, his images of saints and suited men, representative of the fall of religion and society and the hypocritical practices of individuals and institutions in positions of power, are some of the artist's most powerful works.

The present lot, a vivid 1956 mixed media portrait on paper, is reminiscent of the artist's iconic series of ink drawings, Six Gentleman of our Times, executed in the previous year. The soulless eyes placed high on the forehead and the cross-hatched lines underlining the ruggedness of the subject's face provide direct parallels between the two. Additionally, the strong bold outlines, frontal stance and stiff demeanor of this suited man are characteristic of Souza's mockery of the powerful and moneyed classes from this period. In this work on paper, however, his usual monochromatic ink tones are replaced with vibrant colors and the expression of the man is perhaps a little less brutal.

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