Test: The Bengal School and Cultural Nationalism- 1 - Humanities/Arts MCQ

Temple wall statues, miniature paintings, and village mud house decorations as types of Indian art. Glass paintings are not mentioned.

English officers commissioned local artists to paint scenes of the natives for documentation and artistic reasons.

The mixture of traditional and European style of painting led to the Company School of Painting.

Raja Ravi Varma was a self-taught artist of the Travancore Court in Kerala who mastered academic realism to depict scenes from popular epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

The Bengal School was an art movement and style of painting originated in Calcutta, the centre of British power, and was associated with the nationalist movement (Swadeshi).

Abanindranath Tagore spearheaded the Bengal School.

Abanindranath Tagore saw a need to Indianize art education in India and designed a curriculum to include and encourage technique and themes in Indian art traditions.

Abanindranath Tagore was the main artist and creator of the journal, Indian Society of Oriental Art, of the Bengal School.

Raja Ravi Varma was a self-taught artist who mastered academic realism to depict scenes from popular Indian epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

The Bengal School was an art movement spearheaded by Abanindranath Tagore and associated with the nationalist movement. It was critical of colonial Art Schools and the manner in which European taste in art was being imposed on Indians.

Nandalal Bose, a student of Abanindranath Tagore, was invited by Rabindranath Tagore to teach art at Shantiniketan. He was instrumental in shaping the curriculum and the direction of the art school at Shantiniketan.

An important exhibition of works by Paul Klee, Kandinsky, and other artists, who were part of the Bauhaus School in Germany, travelled to Calcutta in 1922. Indian artists and the public had a direct encounter with modern art of this kind.

Gaganendranath Tagore, brother of Abanindranath Tagore, made several paintings using Cubist style and caricatures, in which he often made fun of rich Bengalis blindly following the European style of living.

Amrita Sher-Gil is a perfect example of the meeting of both points of view. She returned to native art to create a true modern Indian art and also accepted modernism growing in Europe.

E.B. Havell and Abanindranath Tagore were critical of colonial Art Schools and the manner in which European taste in art was being imposed on Indians.