Francis Newton Souza

Estimate

60,000 - 80,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Francis Newton Souza
Untitled (Head of an Old Man)
Signed and dated 'Souza '64' centre left and inscribed and dated 'HEAD OF AN / OLD MAN / 1964' on reverse
Oil, black ink and silver paint on masonite
74.9 x 59.7 cm. (29 ½ x 23 ½ in.)
Painted in 1964

Provenance

Previously from the estate of Robert S. Lee Sr., Philadelphia USA

Exhibited

New York, Saffronart, F.N. Souza, September-October 2008

Literature

F.N. Souza, Saffronart Management Corporation and Grosvenor Gallery (Fine Arts) Ltd., New York and London, 2008, illustration p. 80-81

Catalogue Note

'If he was creating monsters, no one would probably be troubled; but because his images are clearly intended to be human, one is compelled to ask why his faces have eyes high up in the forehead, or else scattered in profusion all over the face; why he paints mouths that stretch like hair combs across the face, and limbs that branch out like thistles. 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.' (E. Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Publishers, London, 1962, p. 39)