“Visions of Interiority: Interrogating the Male Body,” at Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), was the first comprehensive exhibition of Rameshwar Broota, a seminal figure of contemporary Indian art. Curated by art historian and KNMA chief curator Roobina Karode, the exhibition comprised five decades of Broota’s paintings, drawings and videos, offering an in-depth exploration of his life’s work.
The earliest work in the exhibition was an oil painting entitled Self Portrait (1963). In it, the young Broota’s gaze is fixed on something beyond the canvas. It is a gaze that one kept coming back to, in order to comprehend the trajectory of Broota’s oeuvre. The gaze is self-aware, evoking a hint of mischief that characterizes his perception of the world, both within and beyond the canvas, with equal parts humor and pain.
