Art for grades 11–12: questions with answers

The Art questions for grades 11–12 from the game, with the correct answers and an explanation for each.

  1. Which film won the first Academy Award for Best Picture, in 1929?

    • Wings
    • The Jazz Singer
    • The General
    • Metropolis

    Correct answer: Wings — 'Wings', a silent film about First World War pilots, won at the first ceremony in 1929.

  2. Who painted 'American Gothic'?

    • Edward Hopper
    • Norman Rockwell
    • Grant Wood
    • Andrew Wyeth

    Correct answer: Grant Wood — The 1930 painting shows a farmer with a pitchfork beside a woman in front of a Gothic-windowed farmhouse in Iowa.

  3. Who designed the colonnade of St Peter's Square in Rome?

    • Brunelleschi
    • Bramante
    • Bernini
    • Borromini

    Correct answer: Bernini — Bernini's twin colonnades of 284 columns (1656–1667) embrace the square 'like the arms of the church'.

  4. Which Indian director made 'Pather Panchali' (1955)?

    • Raj Kapoor
    • Guru Dutt
    • Mira Nair
    • Satyajit Ray

    Correct answer: Satyajit Ray — Ray's debut, made on a shoestring, won a prize at Cannes in 1956 and opened the Apu Trilogy.

  5. Which Venetian painter was court painter to Emperor Charles V?

    • Giorgione
    • Titian
    • Tintoretto
    • Veronese

    Correct answer: Titian — Titian dominated Venetian painting for 60 years and painted Charles V and Philip II of Spain.

  6. Which English composer wrote the orchestral suite 'The Planets'?

    • Elgar
    • Vaughan Williams
    • Holst
    • Britten

    Correct answer: Holst — Holst wrote the seven-movement suite in 1914–1916; 'Jupiter' and 'Mars' are the most played. Pluto had not yet been discovered.

  7. Which architect wrote that a house is 'a machine for living in'?

    • Le Corbusier
    • Walter Gropius
    • Frank Lloyd Wright
    • Alvar Aalto

    Correct answer: Le Corbusier — Le Corbusier's white villas and later raw concrete shaped modernism; he planned the Indian city of Chandigarh.

  8. Who sculpted the bronze 'David' of the 1440s, the first free-standing nude since antiquity?

    • Ghiberti
    • Donatello
    • Luca della Robbia
    • Cellini

    Correct answer: Donatello — Donatello's David stands in the Bargello in Florence; Verrocchio made a later bronze David in the 1470s.

  9. Which Dutch painter reduced his work to grids of black lines and primary colours?

    • Kandinsky
    • Malevich
    • Klee
    • Mondrian

    Correct answer: Mondrian — Mondrian reduced painting to straight lines and primary colours in the 1920s as part of the De Stijl movement.

  10. Which Norwegian composer wrote the music for 'Peer Gynt'?

    • Grieg
    • Dvořák
    • Sibelius
    • Nielsen

    Correct answer: Grieg — Grieg wrote the music in 1875 for Ibsen's play; 'Morning Mood' and 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' are from it.

  11. Hokusai's 'The Great Wave' belongs to which Japanese art tradition?

    • sumi-e
    • ukiyo-e
    • ikebana
    • kabuki

    Correct answer: ukiyo-e — Ukiyo-e, 'pictures of the floating world', flourished in Edo-period Japan and influenced Van Gogh and Monet.

  12. Who directed 'Bicycle Thieves' (1948), a landmark of Italian neorealism?

    • Vittorio De Sica
    • Roberto Rossellini
    • Luchino Visconti
    • Federico Fellini

    Correct answer: Vittorio De Sica — A poor man searches Rome for his stolen bicycle; the film used non-professional actors and real streets.

  13. Who painted 'Olympia' and 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe'?

    • Courbet
    • Manet
    • Degas
    • Monet

    Correct answer: Manet — Both paintings scandalised Paris in the 1860s; Manet bridged Realism and Impressionism.

  14. Which composer's 'Also sprach Zarathustra' opens '2001: A Space Odyssey'?

    • Johann Strauss II
    • Bruckner
    • Mahler
    • Richard Strauss

    Correct answer: Richard Strauss — The opening sunrise fanfare of the 1896 tone poem, after Nietzsche's book, became famous through Kubrick's 1968 film.

  15. Which architect designed the Sydney Opera House?

    • Eero Saarinen
    • Oscar Niemeyer
    • Jørn Utzon
    • Renzo Piano

    Correct answer: Jørn Utzon — The Dane Utzon won the 1957 competition; the sail-like shells took 14 years to build and he left before completion.

  16. Which singer was known as the 'Queen of Soul'?

    • Ella Fitzgerald
    • Nina Simone
    • Aretha Franklin
    • Whitney Houston

    Correct answer: Aretha Franklin — Franklin's 'Respect' (1967) became an anthem; she was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

  17. Who painted 'Nighthawks', the late-night diner scene of 1942?

    • Edward Hopper
    • Grant Wood
    • Norman Rockwell
    • Jackson Pollock

    Correct answer: Edward Hopper — The painting is Hopper's best-known image of urban loneliness; it hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago.

  18. Who composed 'Boléro'?

    • Fauré
    • Debussy
    • Satie
    • Ravel

    Correct answer: Ravel — Written in 1928 as a ballet, 'Boléro' repeats one melody over a snare-drum rhythm for a quarter of an hour.

  19. Who composed the score for 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'?

    • Nino Rota
    • Ennio Morricone
    • John Barry
    • Hans Zimmer

    Correct answer: Ennio Morricone — Morricone scored Sergio Leone's westerns and hundreds of other films; he won an Oscar for 'The Hateful Eight' in 2016.

  20. In which museum is the 'Winged Victory of Samothrace'?

    • the Louvre
    • the British Museum
    • the Vatican Museums
    • the Uffizi

    Correct answer: the Louvre — The headless marble Nike from around 190 BC crowns the Louvre's Daru staircase; it was found in 1863.

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