Modern Indian art grew from colonial art schools to new murals and pr…

Modern Indian art grew from colonial art schools to new murals and prints. Consider the following statements:

(A) Nineteenth-century art schools promoted traditional Indian crafts and academic, naturalist art reflecting Victorian tastes.

(B) The mural The Lives of Medieval Saints employs the technique of fresco buono.

(D) The mural The Lives of Medieval Saints covers the lower half of three walls of its room.

Choose the correct answer from the options given below:

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 1

The correct answer is Option (1) → (A) and (B) only

(A) Nineteenth-century art schools promoted traditional Indian crafts and academic, naturalist art reflecting Victorian tastes. — Correct. The art schools set up in Lahore, Calcutta, Bombay and Madras promoted traditional Indian crafts and art that reflected Victorian tastes.

(B) The mural The Lives of Medieval Saints employs the technique of fresco buono. — Correct. Benode Behari Mukherjee painted this mural in Hindi Bhavana, Shantiniketan, in fresco buono.

(C) The etching Devi by G. R. Santosh expresses Tantric philosophy through its words and motifs. — Incorrect. Devi is an etching by Jyoti Bhatt, made in 1970.

(D) The mural The Lives of Medieval Saints covers the lower half of three walls of its room. — Incorrect. The mural covers the upper half of the three walls, not the lower half.

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): “Introduction to Modernism in India Fine arts was seen as European by the British. … By mid and late nineteenth century, art schools were established in major cities like Lahore, Calcutta (now, Kolkata), Bombay (now, Mumbai) and Madras (now, Chennai). These art schools tended to promote traditional Indian crafts, and academic and naturalist art that reflected Victorian tastes.”

“The Lives of Medieval Saints The Lives of Medieval Saints, a mural in Hindi Bhavana, Shantiniketan, was created by Benode Behari Mukherjee around the eve of India’s Independence from Colonial rule, during 1946–1947. The mural employs the technique of fresco buono and covers almost 23 metre of the entire upper half of the three walls of the room.”

“Devi This is an etching on paper made by Jyoti Bhatt (1934) in 1970. … The portrait of Devi is centrally placed as an iconic image. The two-dimensionality of words and motifs around the portrait expresses the Tantric philosophy, evoking the power of self-evolution and self-involution, seeing reality as the intertwining dynamic and static principle of Shakti.”