The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in partnership with The Italian Embassy Cultural Centre, New Delhi and the Archivio Bice Lazzari presents exhibition In Rhythm: Bice Lazzari and Nasreen Mohamedi brings together the work of two seminal women artists—Italian painter Bice Lazzari (1900–1981) and Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (1937–1990) whose independent artistic journeys led to remarkably resonant approaches to line, repetition, geometry and restraint.
Curated by Andrea Anastasio, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in New Delhi, and Roobina Karode, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, KNMA, with the assistance of Neha ‘Zooni’ Tickoo, Curator, KNMA, the exhibition explores an unexpected artistic kinship between two artists who never met and, as far as records indicate, never encountered each other’s work.
Across the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, Lazzari and Mohamedi progressively distilled their visual languages. Lazzari moved away from the material richness of her earlier practice towards lines, grids and subtle fields of colour, while Mohamedi moved from figuration and colour towards an increasingly precise language of pencil, ink and geometric abstraction. For both, the grid became more than a formal structure: it became a way of thinking and feeling.
Through repetition, intervals and subtle variations in line, spacing and rhythm, both artists transformed restraint into a source of freedom and expression. Their works may appear disciplined and minimal, yet they are animated by a quiet sense of movement, tension and emotion. What emerges is not a shared style, but a shared sensibility—an understanding of abstraction as a space in which concentration, rhythm and feeling can coexist.
In Rhythm does not propose a direct influence between the two artists. Instead, it places their practices in visual dialogue, revealing how two distinct artistic trajectories, shaped in Italy and India, can arrive at strikingly similar forms of visual thought. The exhibition invites audiences to slow down and look closely: to attend to the interval between lines, the repetition of a gesture, the tension within a grid, and the expressive potential of a seemingly simple mark.
To establish one’s own measure within a culture that has prescribed the measures of others is an act of autonomy. Lazzari and Mohamedi did not simply enter the history of abstraction; they enlarged it, demonstrating that form can become a way of thinking, resisting, and remaining free.
As the curators Andrea Anastasio and Roobina Karode observe, the exhibition proposes an “ethical kinship” between the practices of these two seminal women artists, who discovered in the constraints and freedoms of abstraction a shared space for resonance and rhythm.
The exhibition includes loans from the Archivio Bice Lazzari in Rome, private and institutional collections and works by Nasreen Mohamedi from the KNMA collection.
Inauguration on 9th September 2026
Register Here, Registrations will be considered on a first come first served basis.
Exhibition will be on View from 10th Sep.- 22nd Dec. 2026 (During KNMA Museum operating hours)