Observe the image and answer the following question.
What do the raised arms of the figures in the bronze sculpture in the image express?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Helplessness and a cry for help in vain
Option (1) Strength of men wrestling with nature — Incorrect. Men wrestling with nature are the subject of D. P. Roy Chowdhury’s Triumph of Labour, where four men move a rock. The figures shown do not push anything.
Option (2) Helplessness and a cry for help in vain — Correct. The sculpture is Amarnath Sahgal’s Cries Un-heard. The family flings its arms above and cries out for help in vain; the hand gesture shows their helplessness.
Option (3) An inward expression of natural divinity — Incorrect. The inward expression and natural divinity belong to Mrinalini Mukherjee’s fibre figure Vanshri.
Option (4) Rhythm and growth through lyrical stylisation — Incorrect. Lyrical stylisation is said of P. V. Janakiram’s copper Ganesha, not of this gesture.
NCERT (2026-27): “Cries Un-heard This is a sculpture in bronze made by Amarnath Sahgal in 1958. Although the artist only uses abstraction, in which three figures are stick-like and shown in flat rhythmical planes, yet it is easy to understand them as a family — husband, wife and child. They are shown flinging their arms above and crying out for help in vain. Through the medium of sculpture, their helplessness expressed by the hand gesture is turned into a permanent shape.”
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