Ida Kar, Portraits of F.N. Souza, 1957-1961

To coincide with a major retrospective of photographs by Ida Kar at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Grosvenor Vadehra is proud to present Portraits of F.N. Souza 1957 - 1961 by Ida Kar. These images were taken during the period 1957-1961 and have never been published or exhibited before. The exhibition will open in London on 31^st May followed by New Delhi on the 4^th of October, Mumbai on the 6^th of October and Goa on the 8^th of October 2011. A talk with scholars and personal acquaintances of the artist along with the curator from The National Portrait Gallery will take place at each venue and will form a part of an academic paper.

Ida Kar (1908-1974) was an Armenian photographer, who after spending a period in Paris established her own photographic studio 'Idabel' in Cairo. There she met and married Victor Musgrave who went on to open Gallery One in 1944 in London. Here she started as a theatrical photographer, taking sophisticated shots of young actors. However, she became most well known for the photographs she took of artists and writers, some of which have become defining portraits and important social documents of cultural life in post-war Britain.

She had her first solo exhibition in London at Gallery One - Forty Artists from London and Paris in 1954. Her photographs included those of artists Stanley Spencer, Tsugouharu Foujita, Alberto Giacometti, Man Ray and Le Corbusier. She became the first photographer to be honoured by a major retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1960 - Ida Kar: Portraits of Artists and Writers in Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. In preparation Kar travelled to Moscow, photographing Dmitri Shostakovich, and in Paris secured sittings with playwright Eugène Ionesco and co-founder of Cubism, Georges Braque.