‘Pai in Paris’ is an attempt to recover Laxman Pai’s early efforts made in the 40s and 50s, as one of the early artists from the newly independent India, to have confronted the then ambitious project of constructing national identity and seeking international acceptance.
Like other Indian artists at the time (F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza, Akbar Padamsee and Sadanand Bakre), who went overseas for their artistic emancipation, Laxman Pai’s early phase as an artist, was mostly spent in Paris, (1951-1961). This was a most significant phase as he freely experimented with the mechanics of painting, trying and testing out a variety of styles, techniques and extending his training in etchings and lithography with the technical infrastructure available there. Living outside India sharpened the focus on national identity via self-discovery. From his new location in Paris, Pai obsessively painted Goa, yearning for his native land and people, evolving techniques that simultaneously straddled both the grounds of tradition and modernity. If Paul Klee, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso were alluring to him, the Egyptian reliefs and Jaina manuscripts seemed equally modern in their formal expression.
The essay in the catalogue traces the shifts and crossovers made by Pai as he aspired for individuality in his Art.