Laxma Goud was born in Nizampur, Medak, Andhra Pradesh. His childhood was spent in a village environment where he grew up keenly aware, through firsthand observation, of rural tradition and craft. When he was a young boy he watched Andhra leather puppetry and the creation of terracotta ornamentation. As he grew older he studied drawing and painting at the Government College of Fine Arts and Architecture, Hyderabad. Goud went on to study Mural Painting under K.G. Subramanyan at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda from 1963 to 1965. It was at Baroda that Goud discovered his love of printmaking, and became a driving force at the university in building a strong and credible voice for the fine art print.

After graduation, Goud made the unlikely step of returning to his village of Nizampur. With the newly educated viewpoint of an urban sophisticate, the artist found himself attracted to the unselfconscious attitudes toward sexuality that contributed to the relaxed atmosphere of village life. This relaxed sexuality stood in stark contrast to the rigid sexual mores of the Indian middle-classes he had encountered in the cities.

Laxma Goud began to interpret his childhood memories of rural and tribal vivacity through an urban grid in which surreal, libidinal tones mingled with fantasy and poetry. He created masterful small paintings of village life in a palette of monochrome greys. He also drew in pen and ink, and his drawings and etchings from this period are an interesting combination of village nostalgia, the surreal, and the erotic.