Souza was an Indian artist who was born in Saligao, Goa. He studied at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art in Mumbai, but was suspended in 1945 because of his support for the Quit India Movement which called for Indian independence from Britain. Souza was a founding member of the Progressive Artists' Group of Bombay. He was the first post-independence Indian artist to achieve high recognition in the West. Red Houses is fairly typical of Souza’s abstract representational style of art.