An Inquiry into Caravaggio’s Realism

by Roobina Karode, Chief Curator & Director,KNMA

This lecture is in conjunction with the display of Magdalene in Ecstasy by Caravaggio at KNMA, Saket. 

About Caravaggio

Trained in Milan and active in Rome (1592–1606), Naples (1606–7; 1609–10), Malta (1607–8), and Sicily (1608–9), Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was one of the most revolutionary figures of European art. 

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, renowned for his radical application of colours to create a dramatic play of chiaroscuro, also referred to as dramatic illumination, that of high contrast light and shadow, introduced a distinct visual language of Baroque art. Caravaggio's popular representation of religious parables was rebellious with often ‘lifelike’ portrayal of biblical characters, usually accompanied by symptoms of age and poverty, ruptured the Baroque tendencies of displaying grandeur. 

This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience first-hand the work of an artist who broke barriers between art and life, high and low culture and brought saints to life in the reflections of the common man. He has been an inspiration to artists across the globe and across time.

About Roobina Karode

Curator, educator and art critic, Roobina Karode is the Director & Chief Curator at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Delhi, India, since it opened its doors in 2010. She has post-graduate specializations in Art History and in Education.

Karode has over the years curated several significant exhibitions both within India and internationally, including seminal retrospectives on the art practice of Nasreen Mohamedi, at KNMA- Delhi, at the Reina Sofia Museum in Spain in 2015 and at the MET Breuer, New York in 2016. She curated a major monographic exhibitions on under-represented intergenerational artists whose contribution has been crucial within the discourse of modern and contemporary Indian art such as Himmat Shah, Jeram Patel, Vivan Sundaram and Rameshwar Broota. Karode has been focused on women artists and their significant representation in the KNMA Collection. She curated Nalini Malaini’s Retrospective You can’t put acid in a paperbag 2014 in 3 chapters, Arpita Singh’s Submergence: In the midst of here and there in 2019, and a solo exhibition of Jayashree Chakravarty titled Earth as Haven: under the canopy of love at the Musee Guimet in Paris in 2017. In 2020, she curated a thematic exhibition focused on Abstraction and South Asian Women Artists titled Scripting Time, Memory and Ecology with a solo dedicated to Zarina’s practice. Atul Dodiya’s water colours painted during the pandemic titled Walking with the Waves, K. Ramanujam’s first time comprehensive exhibition titled Into the Moonlight Parade and Somnath Hore’s centennial exhibition Birth of a White Rose, were all curated in 2022, alluding to the human condition and the acute need for healing and empathy in the world. She recently co-curated POP SOUTH ASIA -artistic explorations in the popular, a largely unexamined theme with artist-professor Iftikhar Dadi, in collaboration with the Sharjah Art Foundation.

Karode has taught Art History, both Indian Modern and Western art from 1990 to 2006, at various institutions in Delhi, mainly the School of Arts & Aesthetics in JNU, the National Museum Institute, the College of Art and the Jamia Millia Islamia University. She was awarded the Fulbright Fellowship in 2000 and the Ford Teaching Fellowship in 2005-7. In 2019, Karode was the curator for the Indian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale that earned its name in the first five must-see pavilions. Steering a rigorous program at KNMA that aims to embrace and exhibit all art forms, Karode is focused on collaborations and partnering with other significant institutions to consolidate the global presence and relevance of contemporary Indian and South Asian art. Additionally, Karode has been a committee member of the Asia Society India for the past three years.