The following statements are about modern Indian art and its artists.…

The following statements are about modern Indian art and its artists.

(A) Ideas like swadeshi in art were held by art historians like Ananda Coomaraswamy.

(B) M. F. Husain wanted to make the modern style of painting understandable in Indian context.

(D) S. H. Raza largely remained a figurative artist, while Husain moved towards abstraction.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 3

The correct answer is Option (3) → Three

(A) Ideas like swadeshi in art were held by art historians like Ananda Coomaraswamy. — Correct. Coomaraswamy held such ideas around the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
(B) M. F. Husain wanted to make the modern style of painting understandable in Indian context. — Correct. He used western expressionist brush strokes with bright Indian colours.
(C) In Vanshri, Mrinalini Mukherjee turned an ordinary material, hemp-fibre, into a monumental form. — Correct. She used hemp-fibre, a medium she had tried from the early 1970s, and made it a monumental form.
(D) S. H. Raza largely remained a figurative artist, while Husain moved towards abstraction. — Incorrect. It is the other way round: Husain largely remained figurative, while Raza moved towards abstraction.

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): “Tracing the Modern Indian Art …Ideas like swadeshi in art were held by art historians like Ananda Coomaraswamy around the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It meant that we cannot understand Indian modernism as a blind imitation of the West but there was a careful process of selection carried out by the modern artists in India.”

“The Progressive Artists’ Group of Bombay and the Multifaceted Indian Art …M. F. Husain, on the other hand, wanted to make the modern style of painting understandable in Indian context. For example, he would paint using the western expressionist brush strokes with bright Indian colours.”

“Abstraction – A New Trend While Husain largely remained a figurative artist, S.H. Raza moved in the direction of abstraction.”

“Vanshri This artwork was created by Mrinalini Mukherjee in 1994. She uses an unusual material to make this sculpture. She uses hemp-fibre, a medium that she experimented with from the early 1970s. … In this work, entitled Vanshri or ‘Goddess of the Woods’, she turns this ordinary material into a monumental form.”