Untitled (Bust of Man)

In Souza's works from the 1960s, the bold complex heads of the 1950s created with cross hatching gave way to a further distortion that resulted in more complex and mutated forms. "If he was creating monsters, probably no one would 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... 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." (Mullins, F. N. Souza, London, 1962, p.39).
Souza's demonic humans seem to be inspired by Indian iconography. As the artist explains, "The modern Indian artist has an advantage: India's many-headed and multi-limbed gods and goddesses are astonishing creations in the art of distortion, which constantly appears in Hindu iconography. (Artist quote, Contemporary Indian Art, Glenbarra Art Museum, Japan) Powerful distortions of figures in the landscape can alter your view of nature. I once used reproductions of Rothko's paintings on which I painted my wild and distorted heads which appear to be human heads until you look again and again: they become kinetic, the broken colors dance before your eyes, and they become gods and goddesses, they become mutations of creatures to come!" (Artist quote, Interview with Dr. A.S. Raman, 11 August 1986, Christie's London, 9 June 2010, lot 125)