© Beck & Eggeling

Raised in Leeds, England as the son of Indian parents, Desmond Lazaro was constantly in search of his roots. He traveled to India and studied painting in Vadodara (Gujarat, India), where studied the art of Pichhvai painting – a specific style of Indian miniature painting – over many years in Jaipur and Nathdwara (Rajasthan, India).

The Rajasthanian Pichhvai tradition encompasses many aspects of art production from handmade pigments, canvases, and brushes to the actual painting of the miniatures with impressive precision and traditional Indian ornamentation.
While Lazaro's working methods and the handcrafted painting utensils are firmly anchored in Indian tradition, the subjects are thoroughly contemporary and seemingly everyday: they include interiors, letterboxes, or people on a stroll. But all objects and figures are part of a culturally and historically entangled iconography and repeatedly reflect his experiences of a multicultural existence. Lazaro's many years of expertise in the special Pichhvai painting style has earned him international recognition and diverse exhibition platforms. His examination of the poles of tradition and modernity, traditional craftsmanship and innovation, East and West, religion and secularism, also makes his visually fine work universally relevant in its themes.

Desmond Lazaro was born in Leeds in 1968. He followed his university degree with a Master Degree from the renowned University of Vadodara in India and a doctorate on the Pichhvai tradition from the Prince's School of Traditional Art in London. In 2004, he founded a company producing handmade paper, pigments, and brushes, as well as a foundation dedicated to the revival and promotion of traditional art in northern India. Desmond Lazaro lives at various stations in Delhi, Goa, and Pondiycherry as well as in Melbourne, Australia.