Since the 1970s, many Indian artists turned to recognisable figures and stories. Which group of artists in West Bengal painted the social problems that disturbed them?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Jogen Chowdhury, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Ganesh Pyne
Option (1) K. G. Subramanyan, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh and Bhupen Khakar — Incorrect. These artists were in Baroda, where they started using storytelling in their paintings.
Option (2) Jogen Chowdhury, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Ganesh Pyne — Correct. Since the 1970s, these artists in West Bengal painted the social problems that disturbed them.
Option (3) Nirode Mazumdar, Paritosh Sen and Gopal Ghose — Incorrect. They were members of the Calcutta Group, formed in 1943 after the Bengal famine, long before the 1970s.
Option (4) Benode Behari Mukherjee, Ramkinker Baij and Nandalal Bose — Incorrect. They worked at Kala Bhavana, Shantiniketan, from the 1920s. Bose taught there and the other two were his students.
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): “The New Figurative Art and Modern Art from 1980s …Since the 1970s, many artists began to move towards the use of figures and stories that are easy to recognise. Perhaps, this was a way to express their concern towards social problems, following the Indo-Pakistan war in 1971 and the birth of Bangladesh. While K. G. Subramanyan, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh and Bhupen Khakar in Baroda started using storytelling in their paintings, Jogen Chowdhury, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Ganesh Pyne in West Bengal, too, painted the social problems that disturbed them.” |