A legendary artist and a photographer bound by artistic thread

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 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.

The Armenian-born photographer is credited with having redefined artistic portraiture, blending it with reportage, marked by simplicity of composition and bewildering black & white contrast. She portrayed renowned international artists, writers and scholars with a deeper understanding of how their studios and materials transformed into the centre of their very existence and how their idiosyncratic personalities were deftly woven into the process of discovery.

A traveling photography exhibition of portraits of legendary artist F.N. Souza by Ida Kar is set to be hosted in different cities of India after its launch at Grosvenor Gallery, London. The founder of the Indian Progressive Artists Group, Souza is one of India’s most important and recognized artists. She took several images of Souza.

The rebellious artist was one of the founders of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). Souza’s portraits belong to 1957 – 1961, an important phase in his life as he was at the peak of his career. F.N. Souza’s portraits by Ida Kar serve as a visual documentation of his personality as an individual and as an artist.