Throughout his career, Albert Adams created numerous self-portraits. This work was made in 1960 after he had completed his studies at Munich Academy of Arts (1956-1957) and had attended the School of Vision in Salzburg (1957), run by the celebrated expressionist artist, Oskar Kokoschka. When compared with his earlier Self-Portrait, 1956, this work reveals a looser, more confident handling of line, and a more strident contrast between areas of light and dark. This effect was achieved through Adams’ use of aquatint, an engraving technique, whereby the etching plate is coated in a porous resin, resulting in prints that look like ink-wash drawings.

In this self portrait Adams combines the technique of etching and aquatint, to create an image that is constructed through both drawn line and tonal shading. It presents a close-up depiction of the artist’s head and shoulders; his head is turned slightly, and he looks to his right in contemplation, with his hands raised to his face. The print demonstrates Adams’ increasingly sophisticated engagement with expressionist styles and techniques.

Celebration Head, 2003, is a large oil and charcoal drawing on canvas and depicts the head and shoulders of a male figure. Despite the optimism suggested by its title, the drawing is a mediation on suffering and pain; the man’s head angled in a jarring expression, and although his facial features are smudged and obscured, it is clear that he is presented with two mouths, both of which are grinning in anguish, teeth bared. Around his neck is a plaque, with the number 7867, reminiscent of prisoner numbers included in police mugshots.

Towards the end of the 1970s Adams created several artworks that were indebted to the artist Francis Bacon. Like Bacon, Adams created a series of prints and drawings of (male) figures in enclosed spaces, with brutally distorted features, often crying out in pain. In this work a simplified figure is presented, with their face obliterated in a flurry of aggressive marks. Alongside these violent gestures is a carefully drawn cable, which snakes from the upper edge of the paper down past the head, and coils in concentric circles in front of the figure’s chest, culminated in an electrical plug.

This work presents a figure partly positioned behind a wall or doorway. Adams has deftly created a sense of ambiguity in this work: it is not entirely clear whether this is a benevolent figure shielding behind the wall, or a menacing one, lurking. Perhaps the large and swollen fingers provide a clue to the physical damage this person has endured.

Despite having settled permanently in London in 1960, South Africa remained central to Adams’ work; he was moved by and responded to atrocities enacted during his own lifetime and remained acutely aware of continued social and racial injustices.

Although an abstracted and distorted image, Figure Study may be regarded as depicting a larger figure holding a smaller child in their arms. The figure of the child lies horizontally across the body of the larger vertical figure. The head of the larger figure is bowed and apart from an ear, no other facial features are given; Instead, the face is shrouded in blackness. The figure’s shoulder is presented as a white circular form, but although seemingly muscular, a thin arm proceeds from it. Although hair on the child’s head is gestured to, again, no facial features are given, with the face instead presented as a black patch. The child’s body is stiff and angular, with its knees drawn upwards.

Throughout his career Albert Adams preferred to work in series, thinking through his ideas and responses to world events over time. This mode of working resulted in multiple variations on a theme. His series of etchings known as the Incarceration series addressed broad themes of justice and injustice, and Adams explained that “The images themselves were taken from press cuttings, usually of atrocities that were perpetrated in Africa. So although they may seem very grotesque, they were in fact happenings that were real”.

Towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, Albert Adams created a series of etchings and charcoal drawings that reflected upon the history of Robben Island and its significance for contemporary South Africa. Three of Albert Adams’ cousins were imprisoned under South Africa’s apartheid laws, and his close friend, linguist and revolutionary, Neville Alexander was held captive on Robben Island from 1964 until 1974. In this charcoal drawing Adams presents a human skull within a darkened cell.

This print presents a decapitated head of a man spewing bile from his open mouth, positioned within an enclosed room. Hovering above the head are two differently sized, overlapping faces. These spectral onlookers show little emotion, regarding the scene in silent stoicism, and act as a point of contrast with the violence and animation of the head below. This work closely relates to an earlier charcoal drawing by Adams, titled Prisoner (Incarceration series) 1999 (private collection) which presents a decapitated head on a clinical table.

Cell (Incarceration) depicts a disembodied pair of feet positioned within a dark enclosed space, and below a small square barred window. A hand reaches through the opening into the cell, obscuring a face behind. This is a strange image that at once addresses the terrors of entrapment and the pain of physical violence, while also pointing to the continuance of mental incarceration after freedom has been achieved. Towards the end of his life, Adams reflected that, “My work is based on my experience of South Africa as a vast and terrifying prison, an experience which even now, after a decade of democracy, still haunts me”.

This woodcut and charcoal panel, titled Figure Study was produced in 1955 when Albert Adams was studying at the Slade School of Art. Although the British art education system underwent considerable change during the 1950s, the Slade remained committed to its founding principles of providing students with a grounding in drawing from life, and competence in representational and figurative painting techniques. During his time at the Slade, Adams would have produced numerous figure studies; what distinguishes this work is his combination of wood cutting – incising lines into the wood - and charcoal drawing.