UPHESC Assistant Professor Drawing & Painting 2025 PYQs

Concept: In ‘The Meaning of Art’ Herbert Read analyses a picture into five basic elements.

1. Line, form (mass), space, light and shade (tone), and colour.
2. Other writers add texture and so count six or seven, but Read’s list is five.

Short trick: Read’s 5: Line–Form–Space–Light-shade–Colour.

Concept: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement, 1790): ‘The beautiful is that which, apart from concepts, is represented as the object of a universal satisfaction.’

1. Key Kantian ideas: disinterested pleasure, universality, ‘purposiveness without purpose’.
2. Hegel – beauty as sensuous shining of the Idea; Collingwood – art as expression of emotion.

Short trick: Universal + without concept + disinterested = Kant.

Concept: Among the options only ‘Samarangana Sutradhara’ (Raja Bhoja, 11th cent.) is a treatise on art; its painting chapters describe rasa-drishti and rasas in detail.

1. The classic source of rasa is Bharata’s Natyashastra, but it is not given here.
2. Mahabharata and Gita are epic/philosophy; Discovery of India is Nehru’s history.

Short trick: Bhoja’s Samarangana = architecture + painting + rasa-drishti.

Concept: The Parthenon (447–432 BCE, Athens) was built under Pericles with Phidias as overall supervisor and sculptor; Ictinus and Callicrates were the architects.

1. Phidias made the gold-ivory Athena Parthenos and directed the frieze/pediment sculptures.
2. Among the options only Phidias is linked with it.

Short trick: Pericles ordered, Phidias supervised, Ictinus–Callicrates designed.

Concept: The painted limestone bust of Queen Nefertiti (wife of Akhenaten) was made by sculptor Thutmose c.1345 BCE at Amarna, Egypt; now in Neues Museum, Berlin.

1. It belongs to the naturalistic Amarna period of Egyptian art.

Short trick: Nefertiti – Thutmose – Amarna – Berlin.

Concept: Greek art is usually studied in four periods.

1. Geometric (c.900–700 BCE) – geometric pottery.
2. Archaic (c.700–480 BCE) – kouros, kore, ‘archaic smile’.
3. Classical (c.480–323 BCE) – Parthenon, Phidias, Polykleitos.
4. Hellenistic (323–31 BCE) – Laocoön, Nike of Samothrace.

Short trick: G-A-C-H = 4.

Concept: Egyptian art served the afterlife – pyramids, mummies, tomb paintings, ka-statues and the Book of the Dead – so it is called the ‘art of the dead’.

1. Belief that the soul (ka) needs an image and a body to survive led to durable tomb art.

Short trick: Pyramid + mummy + tomb = Egypt.

Concept: Rococo (18th-century France) – light, ornamental, playful aristocratic art.

1. Watteau (fête galante), Boucher and Fragonard (‘The Swing’) are its leading painters.
2. Goya (Spain) is a court painter and forerunner of Romanticism (‘The Third of May 1808’).

Short trick: W-B-F = Rococo; Goya = Romantic Spain.

Concept: Catacombs are underground burial galleries of Rome where early Christians (2nd–4th cent.) painted symbols and scenes – Good Shepherd, fish, Orant.

1. They are the first examples of Christian painting, made before Christianity was legalised (313 CE).

Short trick: Catacomb = Early Christian Rome.

Concept: The Romanesque fresco ‘Martyrdom of St. Lawrence’ (early 12th cent.) is in the chapel of the Cluniac priory at Berzé-la-Ville, belonging to Cluny Abbey (France).

1. Its Byzantine-influenced style reflects the art of Cluny.
2. Saint-Lazare (Autun) is famous for Gislebertus’ sculpted Last Judgement; Saint-Pierre (Moissac) for its portal sculpture; San Pietro al Monte (Civate) for its Apocalypse frescoes.

Short trick: Berzé-la-Ville (Cluny priory) → St. Lawrence on the gridiron.

Concept: ‘You Can’t Please All’ (1981) is Bhupen Khakhar’s celebrated painting showing a nude man (the artist) on a balcony watching the fable of the old man, the boy and the donkey.

1. Khakhar belonged to the Baroda narrative-figurative group.
2. Meera Mukherjee – bronze sculptor; Tyeb Mehta – ‘Kali’, ‘Falling Figure’; G.M. Sheikh – ‘Returning Home after a Long Absence’.

Short trick: You Can’t Please All – Khakhar – 1981.

Concept: The Indian Society of Oriental Art was founded in Calcutta in 1907 by Abanindranath Tagore with Gaganendranath Tagore (and supporters like Lord Kitchener, Havell, Woodroffe).

1. It promoted the Bengal School revival of Indian art.
2. Nandalal Bose and Manishi Dey were Abanindranath’s pupils; Amrita Sher-Gil was outside this movement.

Short trick: ISOA 1907 – Abanindranath.

Concept: G.R. Santosh (Kashmir) is the leading Neo-Tantric painter – geometric male-female (Shiva–Shakti) forms inspired by Kashmir Shaivism.

1. Other Neo-Tantric artists: Biren De, Sohan Qadri, K.C.S. Paniker (in part), Prafulla Mohanti.
2. Husain – figurative; Jatin Das – figures; Ram Kumar – abstract landscapes.

Short trick: Santosh + Biren De = Neo-Tantra.

Concept: The Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG) was formed in Bombay in 1947 by F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza, M.F. Husain, K.H. Ara, H.A. Gade and S.K. Bakre.

1. Souza was its leader; later V.S. Gaitonde, Akbar Padamsee, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar joined.

Short trick: PAG 1947 founders: Souza–Raza–Husain–Ara–Gade–Bakre.

Concept: Match each person with their field.

1. Amrita Sher-Gil – painter (III).
2. Ram V. Sutar – sculptor of the Statue of Unity (IV).
3. Subodh Gupta – installation artist with steel utensils (I).
4. Keshav Malik – poet and art critic (II).

Short trick: Painter–Sculptor–Installation–Critic = III, IV, I, II.

Concept: The Calcutta Group was formed in 1943 (after the Bengal famine) by Pradosh Das Gupta, Paritosh Sen, Nirode Mazumdar, Gopal Ghose, Rathin Maitra, Subho Tagore, Prankrishna Pal and others.

1. B.C. Sanyal worked in Lahore and later Delhi (Delhi Shilpi Chakra) – not a member.

Short trick: Calcutta Group 1943 – Pradosh, Paritosh, Nirode; Sanyal = Lahore/Delhi.

Concept: Abanindranath’s pupils spread the Bengal School by heading art institutions across India.

1. Nandalal Bose – Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan (4).
2. Asit Kumar Haldar – Principal, Lucknow School of Arts (3).
3. D.P. Roy Chowdhury – Principal, Madras School of Arts (2).
4. Shailendranath De – Maharaja School of Arts, Jaipur (1).

Short trick: N-S, H-L, R-M, D-J → 4 3 2 1.

Concept: ‘The Scream’ (1893) is by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch – an icon of Expressionism showing existential anxiety.

1. Manet – ‘Olympia’, ‘Luncheon on the Grass’; Dali – ‘Persistence of Memory’; Picasso – ‘Guernica’.

Short trick: Scream – Munch – Norway – 1893.

Concept: Georges Braque painted ‘Houses at L’Estaque’ (1908); critic Louis Vauxcelles called its forms ‘little cubes’, giving Cubism its name.

1. Gauguin – Tahiti, Synthetism; Seurat – Pointillism; Géricault – ‘Raft of the Medusa’ (Romanticism).

Short trick: L’Estaque cubes → Braque → ‘Cubism’.

Concept: Illustrated Kalpasutra manuscripts belong to the Western Indian (Jain/Apabhramsha) style of Gujarat and Rajasthan (12th–16th cent.).

1. Features: angular faces, protruding farther eye, red ground, gold and blue.
2. East India is associated with Pala Buddhist manuscripts.

Short trick: Kalpasutra = Gujarat = West India; Pala = East.