Art & Culture GK Questions with Answers – Page 31

He painted 'My Mother', a portrait done in the soft wash technique he made famous.

The craftspersons of Bidar were famous for inlay work in copper and silver, and the craft took the name Bidri from the town.

Kathak, the classical dance of north India, reached its golden age in the nineteenth century under Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh, who ruled from Lucknow until the British annexed his kingdom in 1856.

Kui is the language of the Kondh (Kandha) tribe of Odisha and is grouped with Telugu and Gondi in the south-central or south-eastern branch of the Dravidian family.

Tusu Parab is the harvest festival of Jharkhand, kept at Makar Sankranti in mid-January when the winter paddy is in.

The Hoysalas ruled southern Karnataka from Belur and Dwarasamudra, today's Halebidu, and their temples are unmistakable: a raised star shaped platform called the jagati, shrines on a stellate plan, soft chloritic schist or soapstone that allowed jewellery and hair to be carved in minute detail, lathe turned pillars, and bands…

The Konark Sun Temple in Odisha was raised in the thirteenth century by Narasimhadeva I. The plan is the chariot of Surya: a high platform carrying twelve pairs of carved stone wheels drawn by seven horses.

Pattadakal on the Malaprabha was a coronation city of the Chalukyas of Badami, and its temples stand side by side in both idioms: the Papanatha and Galaganatha temples carry curving Nagara towers, while the Virupaksha temple, built by queen Lokamahadevi to mark Vikramaditya II's victory over the Pallavas, and the…

Cave 16 at Ellora, the Kailasa temple, was cut for the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I in the eighth century.

In the Nagara style of north India the tower over the garbhagriha is the shikhara.

The Brihadeshwara or Rajarajeshwara temple at Thanjavur was completed about 1010 CE by Raja Raja I. Its vimana rises in shrinking storeys to over sixty metres and is crowned by a single huge capstone, the whole structure is of granite, and the courtyard holds one of the largest monolithic Nandi…

The Kanheri caves are cut into a basalt hill inside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai.

The twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri stand near Bhubaneswar and hold Jain rock-cut cells cut for monks in the first century BCE.

Elephanta, on Gharapuri island near Mumbai, is a Shaivite rock-cut group whose panels tell Shiva stories: the Trimurti Sadashiva, Ardhanarishvara, Gangadhara, the marriage of Shiva and Parvati and Shiva as Nataraja.

Hampi on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire, and its Virupaksha, Vittala and Hazara Rama temples are Dravidian work of the most elaborate kind: walled enclosures, towering gopurams, pillared kalyana mandapas, the famous stone chariot and the musical pillars.

The garbhagriha, the womb house, is the small square windowless cell that holds the image of the presiding deity. Every other part of a temple is added around it: the tower rises over it, the hall stands in front of it and the circumambulatory passage runs around it.

Francis Newton Souza founded the Progressive Artists Group at Bombay in 1947 along with S. H. Raza, M. F. Husain, K. H. Ara, S. K. Bakre and H. A. Gade.

Kalamkari takes its name from kalam, a pen, and kari, work. Its two centres are Srikalahasti, where the design is drawn freehand with a bamboo pen and the subjects come from temple mythology, and Machilipatnam, where carved wooden blocks print repeated floral and Persian derived patterns.

The Hamzanama, the romance of the adventures of Amir Hamza, was the first great project of Akbar's imperial atelier and took about fifteen years, its large folios painted on cloth by a team under Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad.

He painted Bharat Mata in 1905, during the Swadeshi movement against the partition of Bengal, showing a saffron clad four armed figure holding sheaves of paddy, a white cloth, a book and a rosary, the gifts of food, clothing, learning and faith.