Lalitha Lajmi at Galerie Anne Barrault

29 April - 14 June 2025

Curated by Skye Arundhati Thomas

Written by : Tanisha Gandhi

Renowned Indian artist Lalitha Lajmi makes her European debut with a solo exhibition at Galerie Anne Barrault in Paris this spring. Curated by Skye Arundhati Thomas, the show is accompanied by a publication that reflects on the artist’s work and her enduring legacy. Together, they offer a veritable entry point into Lajmi’s singular, introspective world.

Born in Calcutta in 1932, then the capital of British India, Lajmi later moved to Mumbai to complete her education. These two cities, both cultural and artistic powerhouses, shaped her sensibility. Calcutta, the city of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray; Mumbai, the home of Bollywood and the JJ School of Art - each left an imprint on her imagination.

Walking into the luminous gallery, you're greeted by some of her most poignant watercolours, interspersed with fragments from her personal diaries. A second, more intimate room opens up deeper into the gallery, featuring her drawings; a space that brings us closer to the personal and psychological terrain of her work. A face begins to recur in these pieces: elongated, oval, with a delicate chin. It is her own. Her self-portraits, rendered in subtle variations, seem to quietly follow you through the gallery space.

I show birds flying away in many of my paintings. I suppose that is me. Lalitha Lajmi, 1993.

Lalitha Lajmi,  Performer and Child, watercolour on paper, 2015. Credits : Galerie Art & Soul, Mumbai and Galerie Anne Barrault, Paris.

For Lajmi, painting was a tool of self-inquiry. A self-taught artist (apart from evening classes at JJ School of Arts), she worked across various mediums : watercolour, oil, acrylic, and even printmaking. Her style remains fluid and deeply psychological, bridging the conscious and the unconscious, the real and the surreal.

Driven by an urge to understand herself, she immersed herself in psychoanalysis and dream interpretation. She kept a dream journal, which became a key source of material for her art. Lajmi transformed her interior world of dreams, anxieties, and visions, into a coliseum of visual symbols.

As an adolescent during the Indian independence movement, her art reflects a time of national upheaval and rebirth. As India transitioned from colonial rule to sovereign nationhood, Lajmi turned her gaze inward, examining her own place within a transforming society—especially as a woman navigating shifting roles and expectations.

I don’t have the desire to produce timeless works. They too will have their place in history. Lalitha Lajmi, 2013.

Raised in a high-caste, culturally rich family, Lajmi was surrounded by creativity from the very beginning. Her mother was a linguist, her father a poet, and her brother, Guru Dutt, became one of India’s most celebrated filmmakers of the 1950s. Though little known in France, his movies remain foundational to the language of Indian cinema. At 29, Lajmi held her first solo exhibition at Mumbai’s iconic Jehangir Art Gallery, cementing her place in the Indian art world.

Lalitha Lajmi, Woman & Child with 3 birds, watercolour on paper, 2015. Credits : Estate of Lalitha Lajmi and Galerie Anne Barrault, Paris. Photograph by Dev Lajmi.

At Galerie Anne Barrault, several of her most introspective works are on view, including Woman & Child with 3 Birds and pieces from the Performer series. These canvases are inhabited by figures with distant gazes, suspended in moments of quiet tension. Features on faces blur and replicate one another. Their expressions seem inward-looking, almost unreachable, mirroring the artist’s own psychological introspections.

What is most compelling in Lajmi’s visual language is the recurring presence of the trickster: the mischievous, shape-shifting spirit found in mythologies around the world (Krishna in Hindu mythology, Loki in Norse legends). Lajmi often becomes this figure herself: playful, introspective, and elusive. Through this lens, she performs her own identity: playing roles, slipping masks, and moving through life with both irony and clarity. Her world is theatrical; life, for her, is a game, a quest of self understanding.

Lalitha Lajmi, untitled (from the Performer series), watercolour on paper, 2018. Credits : Estate of Lalitha Lajmi and Galerie Anne Barrault, Paris. Photograph by Dev Lajmi.

Lajmi does not shy away from leaving portions of the canvas bare; as if inviting the viewer in: to participate, to reflect, or simply to witness the performance. Perhaps even to consider what we ourselves feel when confronted by her shifting, ethereal figures. She offers us an opening into her dreamscape, but asks, "what do you see"?

Throughout her life, Lajmi remained committed to this process: the artist as questioner, as mirror, as trickster. She offers the strange truths of a life lived in search of meaning - in all its beauty and ambiguity.

I could, honestly, go on describing her work. But ultimately, it must be experienced in person. The contemporary art world is in the midst of a long-overdue reckoning, rediscovering artists and narratives that were historically sidelined. This exhibition is part of that shift. At last, the voices of women artists from the Global South are being heard in European galleries and institutions.

The show runs from May 29 to June 14, 2025—don’t miss this chance to encounter a visionary artist whose work will leave a lasting mark on you.

Lalitha Lajmi, untitled, watercolour on paper, 2011. Credits : Estate of Lalitha Lajmi and Galerie Anne Barrault, Paris. Photograph by Dev Lajmi.

Lalitha Lajmi, untitled, watercolour on paper, 2015.  Credits : Estate of Lalitha Lajmi and Galerie Anne Barrault, Paris. Photograph by Dev Lajmi.