Which modern Indian painter built his later abstract work around the motif of the Bindu ?

The correct answer is A, Travancore. Raja Ravi Varma was born in 1848 at Kilimanoor, a palace in the princely state of Travancore in present-day Kerala, and he painted many portraits for the Travancore court. He is remembered for bringing European oil technique and perspective to Indian mythological subjects in works such as Shakuntala, Hamsa Damayanti and Lady with the Lamp. Option B is wrong because Mysore is associated with the Mysore school of painting and with the Wodeyar court, not with Ravi Varma's birth. Option C is a tempting distractor: Ravi Varma did work for the Gaekwad ruler of Baroda, who commissioned several of his canvases, but he was not born there. Option D is wrong because Jaipur belongs to the Rajasthani miniature tradition of the Kishangarh and Jaipur schools. Remember Kilimanoor as the birthplace and Baroda as the court that commissioned him; papers set the two states against each other in the same question.

The correct answer is B, Abanindranath Tagore. He painted Bharat Mata in 1905, during the Swadeshi movement that followed the partition of Bengal, showing the motherland as a calm four-armed figure in saffron robes holding a book, sheaves of paddy, a piece of white cloth and a rudraksha garland, the four gifts of learning, food, clothing and faith. Abanindranath led the Bengal School and revived the wash technique. Option A is wrong because Nandalal Bose, though his pupil, is remembered for the Haripura Panels and the decoration of the Constitution manuscript. Option C is wrong because Jamini Roy worked in the Kalighat folk idiom with flat figures and bold lines. Option D is wrong because Gaganendranath Tagore, Abanindranath's brother, is known for caricatures and Cubist experiments. Note the year 1905 as well, the year of the partition of Bengal, because the date of this painting is asked as often as the name of its painter.

The correct answer is B, Nandalal Bose. Nandalal Bose, who headed Kala Bhavana at Santiniketan, was asked to illuminate the handwritten Constitution, and he and his students painted the borders and the headings of its pages with scenes from Indian history, from the Indus seals to Gandhi's march. Option A is the classic trap: Prem Behari Narain Raizada was the calligrapher who wrote out the whole document by hand in flowing italic, but he did not paint the decorations. Option C is wrong because Ramkinkar Baij, also at Santiniketan, was a sculptor whose Santhal Family of 1938 is read as the first modern public sculpture in India. Option D is wrong because Jamini Roy, a Bengal painter of the same generation, had no part in the manuscript. One more name is worth keeping: Beohar Rammanohar Sinha, who decorated the preamble page of the same manuscript under Nandalal Bose.

The correct answer is B, Ramkinkar Baij. Baij worked at Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan and modelled Santhal Family in 1938 in cement and laterite in the open air, showing a Santhal couple with their child and dog moving house. Its rough surface and everyday subject broke with the smooth academic statuary of the time, which is why it is read as the beginning of modern Indian sculpture; Mill Call is his other standard answer. Option A is wrong because Devi Prasad Roy Choudhury made the bronze Triumph of Labour on the Marina at Chennai and was the first chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi. Option C is wrong because S. K. Bakre was the sculptor member of the Progressive Artists' Group of 1947. Option D is wrong because Sailoz Mukherjea was a painter. Baij taught sculpture at Kala Bhavana, and his open-air cement and laterite figures are the standard example of modern Indian sculpture in exam papers.

The correct answer is C, 1947. The Progressive Artists' Group was founded in Bombay in 1947, the year of independence, by Francis Newton Souza, and its six members were Souza, M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, K. H. Ara, H. A. Gade and the sculptor S. K. Bakre. They rejected both the academic realism of the colonial art schools and the revivalism of the Bengal School in favour of a modern idiom. Option A is wrong because 1919 is the year Kala Bhavana, the art school at Santiniketan, was started. Option B is wrong because 1938 is the year of the Haripura Panels and of Santhal Family. Option D is wrong because 1954 is the founding year of the Lalit Kala Akademi and of the National Gallery of Modern Art, both of which came later. A common follow-up asks which member of the group was a sculptor rather than a painter, and the answer is S. K. Bakre.