Shortly afterwards, he was invited to contribute a series of drawings for the Planète Review edited by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels, becoming one of the youngest exponents of the Fantastic Realism.

In 1965 Pagani illustrated books such as Giuseppe Berto's Fantarca (Rizzoli) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Club des Amis du Livre).

About two years later, the day after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's 1969 Libyan coup d'état, the police broke into Pagani's family's house in Tripoli.

In 1971 Pagani had a solo exhibition at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris called Concerto d'Italie where he did a performance inside his drawings projected on a large screen by Laser Graphics Group.

[1] In 1973 Pagani used documentary footage made available by RAI to produce and direct a 27-minute movie-pamphlet entitled Venise, amore mio which Unesco defined as "the best vehicle of information on the dangers besetting Venice and its lagoon".

In 1975 Pagani composed the music and designed the stage set for Megalopolis, a total-opera based on Medioevo Prossimo Venturo (The near future middleages) with a libretto by Italian futurologist Roberto Vacca.

His sculptures, mostly made of old shoes, were exhibited at Centro Internazionale di Brera, Milan and Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara.