Ideas about modern Indian art were divided between anglicists and orientalists. Amrita Sher-Gil is called a perfect example of the meeting of both these points of view. Which style did she use to depict Indian scenes?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → The kind of style the Bauhaus exhibition showed
Option (1) The wash technique the Japanese artists taught — Incorrect. Two Japanese artists who came with Kakuzo Okakura taught the wash technique at Shantiniketan. Sher-Gil is not named for this.
Option (2) The kind of style the Bauhaus exhibition showed — Correct. Sher-Gil used the kind of style that the Bauhaus exhibition showed to depict Indian scenes. So she is called a perfect example of the meeting of both points of view.
Option (3) The Cubist style of geometric patterns — Incorrect. Gaganendranath Tagore used the Cubist style, making building interiors out of geometric patterns. Sher-Gil is not named for this.
Option (4) The realism of the European academic style — Incorrect. The Bauhaus artists had rejected academic realism. Sher-Gil used their kind of style, not the academic one.
Note: This topic was not named in the CUET 2026 syllabus, but it was part of the NCERT chapter. In 2025 and 2026, NTA also asked questions on topics in NCERT that the CUET syllabus did not name. So our mocks have questions from every part of the NCERT chapter, to give you enough practice. Read the whole chapter, not only the sub-topics named in the syllabus.
NCERT (2026-27): “Pan-Asianism and Modernism … Hence, the year 1922 may be regarded as a remarkable one, when an important exhibition of works by Paul Klee, Kandinsky and other artists, who were part of the Bauhaus School in Germany, travelled to Calcutta. These European artists had rejected academic realism, which appealed to the Swadeshi artists. … It is in the paintings by Gaganendranath Tagore, brother of Abanindranath Tagore, that the influence of modern western style of paintings can be clearly seen. He made several paintings using Cubist style, in which building interiors were created out of geometric patterns.…” “Different Concepts of Modernism: Western and Indian The divide between anglicists and orientalists, as mentioned earlier, was not based on race. Take the case of the Bengali intellectual, Benoy Sarkar, who sided with the anglicists and considered modernism that was growing in Europe as authentic in an article, ‘The Futurism of Young Asia’. … On the other hand, it was E. B. Havell, an Englishman, who was in favour of return to native art to create a true modern Indian art. … Amrita Sher-Gil, whom we will discuss in the next chapter, is a perfect example of the meeting of both these points of view. She used the kind of style that the Bauhaus exhibition showed to depict Indian scenes.” |