A painter`s roots

Laxman Pai’s oeuvre evolved from the pop art of the 1960s, though his themes are more varied.

Paris defines Laxman Pai in more ways than one. The French beard, the flowing mane of thinning, white hair, even the thin vest that is threadbare at the chest, are almost an affectation — almost. And Pai himself is happiest talking of those days in Paris when “it was full of immigrants”, a time when artists Akbar Padamsee, F N Souza and S H Raza called it home.

It was as part of this coterie of Indian artists — but always distinct from their stamp of work — that Pai made his presence in Paris felt.

Served a disciplinary note by the J J School of Art in Bombay where he was a teacher (he had earlier also studied there), Pai sold the Rs 10,000 apartment in Mumbai gifted to him by his father and made off to Paris “where Raza made all my arrangements”.

Raza got him a student card at the Ecole de Paris, and for the next 10 years, Pai devoted his life to studying and painting there. “With the student card,” he recalls of those heady days, “you could eat cheaply, concerts were subsidised and entry to museums was free.”

Two interim visits to India and a short stint with Souza in London didn’t appeal to him, and he returned to the Paris of Picasso and Chagall, but as a rebel.

“I didn’t study Western art at the J J School,” he says somewhat grandly, “and in Paris I wasn’t influenced by the Ecole de Paris but influenced them with my two-dimensional art, which is the basis for miniature art.”

Time and again Pai brings up his roots — in Goa and in Bombay — to justify the development of an oeuvre that, though rooted in India (and in forms of nature), can best be described as evolving from the sixties pop art that became a popular movement around the world.

Decades later, that flamboyance, elements of kitsch and fluorescent colours still form the subject of his work, even though thematically he’s taken with elements from mythology and history, from family life, musical traditions, the seasons and so on. Hardly unusual for someone who was born into a strong musical tradition and has played the flute, violin, esraj and sitar like a pro.

Far from Paris — which he left when Goa was liberated in 1961 — Pai has since lived and worked in Bombay, Goa and now, New Delhi.

“It hardly matters where you are,” he reasons, on the day an exhibition of his Parisienne works opens at the Delhi Art Gallery, “what matters is observation” — and Pai, a keen walker, will tell you he can recall in pensive moments (like the poet William Wordsworth) forms he might have noted decades ago.

“A person’s formative years are very important,” he insists, “and for me those years were spent in Bombay and Paris.”

Given to living six months every year in the US with his son, Pai insists that now, as before, “I never take things at face value”. So what did he learn from his Paris decade? Pai looks at you keenly, then says: “I went to Paris to show them what I was worth.”