Laxmi Chauk

This early painting by Pakistani artist Ijaz Ul Hassan was inspired by the view from a second floor restaurant window. Laxmi Chauk is centrally located in Lahore, Pakistan, Hassan's birthplace, and used to be a popular stomping ground for aspiring artists, radical poets and midnight intellectuals during the 1950s. Now a popular food centre, Laxmi Chauk is depicted in its aged and forgotten state with the artist's early technique of building textural paint surfaces adequately capturing its crumbling cement and brick walls.