Gaganendranath and Rabindranath Tagore knew about the international t…

Gaganendranath and Rabindranath Tagore knew about the international trends of Cubism and Expressionism. What did these two artists think about art?

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 4

The correct answer is Option (4) → Art need not copy the world but create its own world

Option (1) Art should capture the immediate environment and its people — Incorrect. This was the way of Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, Nandalal Bose’s students. Their style could capture their immediate environment and those who lived there.
Option (2) Art should draw on Mughal and Pahari miniatures — Incorrect. This was the way of the Bengal School. Rabindranath’s small visual world was a complete departure from that style.
Option (3) Art should learn from the rural folk art of Bengal — Incorrect. This was the way of Jamini Roy. He noticed that the rural, folk art in Bengal had much in common with modern European masters like Picasso and Paul Klee.
Option (4) Art need not copy the world but create its own world — Correct. They thought art could create its own world out of forms, lines and colour patches.

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 …Apart from the famous Bauhaus exhibition that travelled to Calcutta, as discussed in the previous chapter, modern European art influenced Indian artists through art magazines that were in circulation. Artists from the Tagore family — Gaganendranath and poet–painter Rabindranath, thus, knew about the international trends of Cubism and Expressionism, which had rejected academic realism and experimented with abstraction; They thought that art need not copy the world but create its own world out of forms, lines and colour patches.…”

Gaganendranath and Rabindranath Tagore knew about the international trends of Cubism and Expressionism. What did these two artists think about art?

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 4

The correct answer is Option (4) → Art need not copy the world but create its own world

Option (1) Art should capture the immediate environment and its people — Incorrect. This was the way of Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, Nandalal Bose’s students. Their style could capture their immediate environment and those who lived there.
Option (2) Art should draw on Mughal and Pahari miniatures — Incorrect. This was the way of the Bengal School. Rabindranath’s small visual world was a complete departure from that style.
Option (3) Art should learn from the rural folk art of Bengal — Incorrect. This was the way of Jamini Roy. He noticed that the rural, folk art in Bengal had much in common with modern European masters like Picasso and Paul Klee.
Option (4) Art need not copy the world but create its own world — Correct. They thought art could create its own world out of forms, lines and colour patches.