UPHESC Assistant Professor Drawing & Painting Syllabus 2026

UPHESC Assistant Professor Drawing & Painting Syllabus

The written exam has two parts: General Knowledge (30 questions, the same for all subjects) and Drawing & Painting (90 questions). Both syllabi below are the official ones of the Uttar Pradesh Education Service Selection Commission, Prayagraj.

Part 1: General Knowledge (30 questions, 90 marks)

Compulsory for all disciplines. Download PDF (0.3 MB)

Unit 1: Current Affairs

• Major events and current affairs: national and international
• Personalities in news
• Sports news
• Current research in the field of science

Unit 2: Teaching and Research Aptitude

• Teaching: nature, objectives, need, methods, evaluation and factors affecting teaching
• Research: meaning and methods
• Data: source, collection and analysis
• Role of UGC in qualitative development in higher education

Unit 3: Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

• ICT: meaning, advantages and disadvantages
• Basics of internet and e-mailing
• General abbreviations and terminology

Unit 4: People and Environment

• People and environment interaction
• Environmental degradation: causes and solutions
• National and international efforts for a better environment
• Environmental control

Unit 5: Indian History and Geography

• Salient features of Indian culture
• Indian National Movement (1857–1950)
• Origin of the universe and the solar system
• Indian geography (general)

Unit 6: Indian Constitution and Economy

• Preamble, Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles
• Indian political system: legislature, executive and judiciary
• Election Commission and Public Service Commission
• Population, poverty, unemployment; planning and development; income tax
• Agriculture, industry, trade; money, currency, banking and capital market

Part 2: Art / Drawing & Painting (subject code 20) – 90 questions, 270 marks

The Drawing & Painting paper is at post-graduate (Master's) level. The complete official syllabus is below. Download Drawing & Painting syllabus PDF (0.4 MB)

Unit I: Foundation of Visual Arts

• Principles of Composition
• Fundamentals of Painting
• Six Limbs of Indian Painting
• Chitrasutra / Vishnudharmottara Purana

Unit II: Materials and methods of Visual Arts

• Traditional and modern mediums in panting. (Dry Pastel, Wash Painting, Tempera, Oil Painting, Acrylic Painting)
• Mural techniques (Fresco Secco & Buono)
• Printmaking techniques (Woodcut, Linocut, Etching, Serigraphy)
• Mix Media- (Collage, Digital painting techniques, Relief works, textural applications)

Unit III: Aesthetics (Indian and Western Concepts)

• Concept of Indian Aesthetics (Rasa theory, Dhwani, Alankara, Auchitya)
• Indian thinkers (Bharat muni, Rabindranath Tagore, A. K. Coomaraswamy, Bhamaha, Vamana, Abhinavgupta, Anandavardhana)
• Concept of Western Aesthetics (Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Tolstoy, Croce, Roger Fry, Freud, Susanne Langer, Clive Bell, Herbert Read)
• Inter-relationship between music, poetry and painting.

Unit IV: Folk Tradition of India

• Folk Painting Traditions – (Madhubani, Odisha Pattachitra, Phad, Kalamkari, Sanjhi, Saura, Kalighat)
• Tribal Art (Warli, Gond Art, Bhil Art, Sohrai, Kohbar)
• Ritual Art (Mandana, Aipan, Rangoli, Alpana, Sanjhi)
• Folk Craft (Dhokra metal craft, Gorakhpur (Aurangabad) terracotta, Azamgarh (Nizamabad) black pottery, Molela of Rajasthan)

Unit V: Pre-history and Proto-history of Indian Painting

• Important pre-historic sites of India (Bhimbetka, Panchmari, Mirzapur, Hoshangabad)
• Indus Valley Civilization (Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, Lothal)
• Major Antiquities (Priest King, Dancing Girl, Seals, Beads)
• Architectural importance and town planning of Mohenjo-daro.

Unit VI: History of traditional and Modern Indian Painting

• Ajanta cave Paintings (Cave no. 1, 2, 9, 10, 16, 17), Bagh caves paintings (techniques & subject matter)
• Miniature painting traditions (Pala, Jain, Rajasthani, Mughal, Pahari.) and Company School of Paintings.
• Indian Renaissance painting (Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Asit kumar Haldar, Kshitindranath Majumder, Binod Bihari Mukherjee, Sailendra Nath Dey)
• Modern Indian painters (Raja Ravi Verma, Amrita Shergil, Jamini Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore.)
• Important artists’ groups. (Calcutta Group, Progressive Artists’ Group, Delhi Shilpi Chakra, Cholamandalam Artists’ Village)

Unit VII: Contemporary Indian Art

• Contemporary trends in 1950s & 1960s (Tayeb Mehta, Ramkumar, K. G. Subramanyam, Ganesh Pyne, Jogen Chowdhury, krishen Khanna).
• Trends in abstractions, since the 1970s ( Prabhakar Barwe, Paramjit Singh, Ratan Parimoo, Ganesh Haloi, G. R. Santosh)
• 20th & 21st century painters (Manjit Bawa, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Bhupen Khakhar, Atul Dodia, Laxma Gaur, Paramjit Singh, Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Ranvir Kaleka, Jitish Kallat, R. S. Bist, Madanlal Nagar, Anjolie Ela Menon, Satish Chandra, Badrinath Arya, Gogi Saroj Pal, Arpana Kaur)
• New Media & Installation (Nalini Malani, Vivan Sundaram, Sheba Chhachhi, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Ranbir Kaleka, Navjot Altaf, Sheela Gowda.)

Unit VIII: Pre-historic to Pre-modern, Western Art.

• (Lascaux Cave, Altamira, Stonehenge of England)
• Egyptian Art, Aegean Art, Greek and Roman Art.
• Early christian, Bizantine, Romanesque, Gothic
• Renaissance paintings and their important painters (Masaccio, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian)
• Mannerism, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism, Romanticism

Unit IX: Major Western Modern movements

• Realism (Gustave Courbet, Millet, Daumier), Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas, Pissarro), Post Impressionism (Cezanne, Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Seurat).
• Fauvism (Matisse, Andre Derain) Expressionism (Munch, Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, Egon Schiele) Cubism (Picasso, Braque).
• Constructivism (Tatlin, Rodchenko, Naum Gabo), Futurism (Boccioni, Carlo Carra). Dadaism (Duchamp, Picabia, Max Ernst). Surrealism (Dali, Max Ernst, Miro, De Chirico).
• Abstract Expressionism (Pollock, De Kooning, Rothko, Newman, Clyfford Still, Krasner) Op Art(Victor Vasarely, Riley). Pop Art (Warhol, Oldenburg, Jasper Johns)

Unit X: Post modern western Art

• Minimalism (Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Carl Andre, Robert Morris) & Graffiti Art (Basquiat, Banksy)
• Conceptual Art (Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner).
• Land and Environment Art (Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Richard Long).
• New Media, Performance & Installation Art (Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Anish Kapoor, Bruce Nauman, Ilya Kabakov, Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys).

How to prepare

• Match the official Drawing & Painting syllabus unit by unit with your Master's notes and mark weak units first.
• Solve previous UPHESC/UPESSC Assistant Professor Drawing & Painting papers (Advt 51 re-exam of April 2026 is the most recent).
• Do not leave GK for the end: Teaching and Research Aptitude and ICT are scoring units of the GK paper.
• Practise MCQs under time limits because of negative marking (-1 per wrong answer).

Syllabus PDFs of all 43 subjects are on UPHESC Assistant Professor.