UPHESC Assistant Professor Drawing & Painting 2025 PYQs

Concept: Bengal’s terracotta temples (Bishnupur etc.) arose because the alluvial delta has abundant clay but no building stone.

1. A is true – terracotta is the characteristic medium of Bengal temples and figures.
2. R is true – lack of stone nearby made baked clay/brick the natural choice.
3. Hence both A and R are correct.

Short trick: Delta = clay, no stone → terracotta Bengal.

Concept: Advertising aims to inform, persuade and remind – building sales for a brand.

1. Creating a favourable climate for sales, reminding customers and attracting new buyers are its core aims.
2. Changing the brand itself is a management/branding decision, not the purpose of advertising.

Short trick: Inform – Persuade – Remind; never ‘change the brand’.

Concept: E.B. Havell, Principal of Government School of Art, Calcutta, wrote ‘The Ideals of Indian Art’ (1911).

1. Havell also wrote ‘Indian Sculpture and Painting’ (1908) and supported the Bengal School with Abanindranath.
2. Herbert Read is a British critic (‘The Meaning of Art’); Gaganendranath and Ramendranath were painters.

Short trick: Havell = Ideals (1911) + Bengal School patron.

Concept: ‘Asli Swad Zindagi Ka’ is the famous tag line of Cadbury Dairy Milk (Ogilvy, 1990s).

1. Pepsi – ‘Yeh Dil Maange More’; Amul – ‘The Taste of India’; Perk – ‘Thodi si pet pooja’.

Short trick: Dairy Milk = ‘Kuch meetha ho jaaye’ & ‘Asli swad zindagi ka’.

Concept: The Diamond Sutra found at Dunhuang (China) is the oldest dated woodblock-printed book (dated 868 CE, given as 869 in many texts).

1. It has a printed frontispiece of the Buddha preaching – the earliest dated woodcut picture.
2. Dance of Death (Holbein) and Biblia Pauperum are 15th–16th-century European block books.

Short trick: Dunhuang + Diamond Sutra = oldest dated woodcut.

Concept: Mosaic builds an image from small coloured pieces (tesserae) of glass, stone or tile set in mortar.

1. Famous: Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna, Hagia Sophia.
2. Fresco = pigment on wet plaster; mural = any wall painting; miniature = small-scale painting.

Short trick: Tesserae = Mosaic.

Concept: Drypoint is an intaglio process: lines are scratched directly into a metal plate (usually copper) with a hard needle, raising a ‘burr’ that gives velvety lines.

1. Copper is soft enough to scratch and holds the burr – best surface.
2. Limestone is for lithography, silk screen for serigraphy, wood for woodcut.

Short trick: Drypoint needle + copper burr.

Concept: Shyam Sharma (Patna) is a nationally known printmaker, famous for woodcuts and linocuts on Buddhist and folk themes.

1. Ram Kumar is known as an abstract landscape painter.
2. D.P. Dhuliya and B.N. Arya are known as painters/teachers, not chiefly as printmakers.

Short trick: Shyam Sharma = woodcut master of Bihar.

Concept: In intaglio (engraving, etching) ink lies in the grooves below the plate surface and must be pulled out under heavy press pressure.

1. The paper is soaked/dampened before printing – Statement I true.
2. Damping softens the fibres so they are pushed into the grooves and lift the ink – Statement II true.

Short trick: Intaglio = damp paper + heavy press.

Concept: Luminosity is the effect of a surface appearing to glow or emit light – an illusion created by value and colour contrast.

1. A light area surrounded by darker, duller tones seems to shine.
2. Illusion of space = depth/perspective; of texture = implied texture; line is a basic element, not luminosity.

Short trick: Lumen = light → luminosity = illusion of light.

Concept: Line engraving (cutting with a burin) and etching (biting lines with acid) are both intaglio processes – ink is held in incised lines.

1. Linocut is a relief process.
2. Mezzotint is an intaglio tonal method (rocker), not a line method.
3. Viscosity printing is a multi-colour intaglio technique of S.W. Hayter/Krishna Reddy, not line engraving itself.

Short trick: Incised line + acid = Intaglio family.

Concept: Buon fresco (Italian ‘fresh’): pigments mixed in water are applied to wet lime plaster; as it dries the colour is locked in.

1. Encaustic = pigment in hot wax.
2. Wash = thin transparent watercolour layers on paper (Bengal School).
3. Gouache = opaque watercolour on paper.

Short trick: Fresh plaster = Fresco.

Concept: Archaeologist Dr. Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar discovered the Bhimbetka rock shelters (Raisen, M.P.) in 1957–58.

1. Bhimbetka is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2003) with paintings from Mesolithic onward.
2. The Tagores and Satish Gujral are modern artists.

Short trick: Wakankar – Bhimbetka – 1957.

Concept: The Great Bath is in the citadel of Mohenjo-daro (Sindh, Pakistan).

1. Lothal – dockyard; Kalibangan – ploughed field, fire altars; Harappa – granaries.

Short trick: Mohenjo-daro: Great Bath, Dancing Girl, Priest-King.

Concept: The paintings of Altamira (Spain) were discovered in 1879 by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola (his daughter María first noticed the bison on the ceiling).

1. Coomaraswamy – art historian; B.B. Lal – Indian archaeologist (Kalibangan, Ayodhya).

Short trick: Altamira bison – Sautuola – 1879.

Concept: Numerous terracotta Mother Goddess figurines (with fan-shaped headdress, necklaces) were found at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.

1. They show fertility worship of the Indus people.
2. Company style is 18th–19th-century painting; modern art is 20th century.

Short trick: Indus = Mother Goddess + Pashupati seal.

Concept: Likhunia, Bhaldaria and Kohbar are rock-painting sites of the Mirzapur–Kaimur region (U.P.).

1. Singhanpur is in Raigarh district, Chhattisgarh – known for hunting scenes and stick-like figures.
2. So Singhanpur is not in Mirzapur.

Short trick: Singhanpur = Raigarh (Chhattisgarh).

Concept: Font-de-Gaume (Dordogne, France) is the polychrome-painted cave famous for its bison and painted mammoths.

1. Altamira is famous for bison; Lascaux for bulls, horses and deer – no mammoth paintings.
2. Les Combarelles has mainly engraved (incised) figures rather than paintings.

Short trick: Font-de-Gaume = painted mammoths; Lascaux = bulls; Altamira = bison.

Concept: Archibald Carlleyle (Archaeological Survey) found the first prehistoric rock paintings of India in the Kaimur hills, Mirzapur, in 1867–68.

1. John Cockburn later (1880s) published the Mirzapur paintings.
2. Anderson worked at Singhanpur area (1910s); Panchanan Mitra wrote on Indian prehistory (1923).

Short trick: First Indian rock art: Carlleyle, Kaimur, 1867.

Concept: Rajasthani painting is also called Rajput painting – the term popularised by A.K. Coomaraswamy (‘Rajput Painting’, 1916).

1. Jaipur, Bundi-Kota, Jodhpur are only sub-schools (thikanas) of Rajasthani painting.

Short trick: Rajasthani = Rajput (Coomaraswamy).