Category Personalities

Who is creator of comic strip “Peanuts”?

Who was Charles M. Schulz?

Charles Schulz was a cartoonist from the U.S., who created the “Peanuts” comic strip that ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 26, 1922, Schulz grew up reading the comics section of the newspaper.

Inspired by these black and white figures, Schulz started drawing pictures of his favorite cartoon characters from a young age. One of his drawings, Spike, the family dog even got published in a national newspaper. Schulz was so proud of this moment that he made up his mind to become a cartoonist when he grew up.

Getting published

Schulz’s first group of regular cartoons, a weekly series of one-panel jokes called “Lil’ Folks”, was published from June 1947 to January 1950 in the “St Paul Pioneer Press”. It drew the attention of the United Feature Syndicate of New York which decided to publish Schulz’s new comic strip. However, the syndicate wanted to change the name of the strip because the name “Li’l Folks” resembled two other comics of the time. So, to avoid confusion, the syndicate settled on the name “Peanuts”. But Schulz always disliked the title. Even though he didn’t like the name, Schulz couldn’t deny the fact that the strip was successful. The cartoon began appearing in seven newspapers with the characters Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty and Snoopy. Within a year, the strip appeared in 35 papers, and by 1956, it was in over a hundred. At one time, it was read by 355 million people all over the world.

What made it special?

The cartoon was centred on the simple and touching figures of a boy and his dog. Snoopy. Adults were never seen in the panels, and the action involved ordinary, everyday happenings. The comical defects of humanity were reflected through Schulz’s gentle humour, which made the cartoon strip appealing Schulz always insisted that only he would draw the characters and not allow others to do the draftsmanship. As the strip became more popular, new characters were added. Schulz received the Reuben Award twice from the National Cartoonists Society in 1955 and 1964.

OH REALLY?

  • “Peanuts” appeared in 2,300 newspapers in over 19 languages. Reruns and specials continue even today
  • Schulz is credited with coining the phrase “Good Grief
  • He wrote a book, Why, Charlie Brown. Why? to help children understand the subject of cancer.
  • Schulz was a huge supporter of the space programme. The 1969 Apollo 10 command module was named Charlie Brown and a lunar module was named Snoopy.

 

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Born into an aristocratic family from Travancore in the mid-19th Century, who is known for his works depicting Hindu mythology using European styles?

Raja Ravi Varma was a celebrated Indian painter and artist. He is considered among the greatest painters in the history of Indian art. His works are one of the best examples of the fusion of European academic art with a purely Indian sensibility and iconography. Additionally, he was notable for making affordable lithographs of his paintings available to the public, which greatly enhanced his reach and influence as a painter and public figure. His lithographs increased the involvement of common people with fine arts and defined artistic tastes among common people. Furthermore, his religious depictions of Hindu deities and works from Indian epic poetry and Puranas have received profound acclaim.

Varma was patronised by Ayilyam Thirunal, the next Maharaja of Travancore and began formal training thereafter. He learned the basics of painting in Madurai. Later, he was trained in water painting by Rama Swami Naidu and in oil painting by Dutch portraitist Theodor Jenson.

The British administrator Edgar Thurston was significant in promoting the careers of Varma and his brother. Varma received widespread acclaim after he won an award for an exhibition of his paintings at Vienna in 1873. Varma’s paintings were also sent to the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 and he was awarded three gold medals.[8] He travelled throughout India in search of subjects. He often modelled Hindu Goddesses or Indian women, whom he considered beautiful. Ravi Varma is particularly noted for his paintings depicting episodes from the story of Dushyanta and Shakuntala, and Nala and Damayanti, from the Mahabharata. Ravi Varma’s representation of mythological characters has become a part of the Indian imagination of the epics. He is often criticized for being too showy and sentimental in his style but his work remains very popular in India. Many of his fabulous paintings are housed at Laxmi Vilas Palace, Vadodara.

 

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Elected the first Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1955, who is known for his iconic folk style paintings with flat forms and bold outlines?

Jamini Roy was an Indian painter. He was honoured with the State award of Padma Bhushan in 1955. He was one of the most famous pupils of Abanindranath Tagore, whose artistic originality and contribution to the emergence of art in India remains questionable.

Jamini Roy was born in the year 1887 at Beliatore village in the Bankura district of West Bengal. Roy was born into an affluent family of land-owners. His father, Ramataran Roy, resigned from his government services to pursue his interest in art. In the year 1903, when he was only 16 years old, Jamini Roy left his village and made it all the way to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to enroll himself at the Government College of Art. There, he received education under Abanindranath Tagore, famous for his valuable contribution in the field of modern art. Tagore was the vice principal of the college and trained Roy as per the prevailing academic tradition. Roy finished his education in 1908 and was given a Diploma in Fine Arts. Roy was true to the art that he learned and started painting in accordance with the Western classical style. But he straightaway realized that his heart belonged to some other form of art. 

Jamini Roy’s paintings that belong to the early 1920’s reflect the influences of the Bengal School of art. Initially, he came up with some excellent paintings that marked his entry into the Post-Impressionist genre of landscapes and portraits. Later in his career, several of his many paintings were based on the everyday life of rural Bengal. Then, there were numerous ones revolving around religious themes like Ramayana, Radha-Krishna, Jesus Christ, etc. Jamini Roy also painted scenes from the lives of the aboriginals called Santhals. Throughout his works, his brush strokes were largely bold and sweeping. Around mid-1930s, Jamini Roy moved away from the conventional practice of painting on canvases and started painting on materials like cloth, mats and even wood coated with lime. He also started experimenting with natural colors and pigments derived from mud, chalk powder and flowers instead of European paints.

 

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Nephew of poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was instrumental in setting up the Indian Society of Oriental Art?

The Victoria Memorial Hall is proud to present this major exhibition of paintings of the great master Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), the foundational figure of the Bengal school of Art, and widely hailed as the ‘Father of Modern Indian Art’. Curated by Professor Ratan Parimoo, the Director of Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum of Indology and N. C. Mehta Gallery, Ahmedabad, and a leading expert of Tagore paintings, this exhibition – put together painstakingly from the combined collections of the Victoria Memorial Hall and Rabindra Bharati society – includes representative samples from Abanindranath’s entire oeuvre, showcasing not only iconic works like Bharatmata and The Passing of Shah Jahan, but also works from his celebrated series of Krishna Lila, the Mangal Kavyas, The Arabian Nights, and his playful takes on Masks. Many of the works included in this exhibition will be on view to the public for the first time.

Abanindranath Tagore was born in Jorasanko, Calcutta, British India, to Gunendranath Tagore and Saudamini Tagore. His grandfather was Girindranath Tagore, the second son of “Prince” Dwarkanath Tagore. He was a member of the distinguished Tagore family, and a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. His grandfather and his elder brother, Gaganendranath Tagore, were also artists.

Tagore learned art when studying at Sanskrit College, Kolkata in the 1880s.

In 1890, around the age of twenty years, Abanindranath attended the Calcutta School of Art where he learnt to use pastels from O. Ghilardi, and oil painting from C. Palmer, European painters who taught in that institution.

In 1889, he married Suhasini Devi, daughter of Bhujagendra Bhusan Chatterjee, a descendant of Prasanna Coomar Tagore. At this time he left the Sanskrit College after nine years of study and studied English as a special student at St. Xavier’s College, which he attended for about a year and a half.

He had a sister, Sunayani Devi.

 

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Who literally wrote the Constitution?

The original Constitution of India was handwritten by Prem Behari Narain Raizada in a flowing italic style with beautiful calligraphy. The Constitution was published in Dehradun and photolithographed by the Survey of India.

The original copies of the Indian Constitution were written in Hindi and English. Each member of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the Constitution, signed two copies of the constitution, one in Hindi and the other in English.

There are a total of 117,369 words in the English version of the Constitution of India which contains 444 articles in 22 parts, 12 schedules and 115 amendments.

With so much of writing, the Indian Constitution is the longest of any sovereign country in the world. In its current form, it has a Preamble, 22 parts with 448 articles, 12 schedules, 5 appendices and 115 amendments. Both the versions of the Constitution, Hindi and English, were handwritten. It is the longest handwritten constitution of any country on earth.

 

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The original Constitution of India, adopted on January 26, 1950, was entirely handcrafted by the artists of Shantiniketan under the guidance of which Indian art exponent?

The original Constitution of India, adopted on 26 January 1950, was not a printed document. It was entirely handcrafted by the artists of Shantiniketan under the guidance of Acharya Nandalal Bose, with the calligraphy texts done by Prem Behari Narain Raizada in Delhi. This document is now preserved in a special helium-filled case in the library of the Parliament of India. In many ways, the original handcrafted Constitution represents one of the triumphs of Shantiniketan and Kala Bhavan.

At the beginning of each part of the Constitution, Nandalal Bose has depicted a phase or scene from India’s national experience and history. The artwork and illustrations (22 in all), rendered largely in the miniature style, represent vignettes from the different periods of the history of the Indian subcontinent, ranging from Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley, the Vedic period, the Gupta and Maurya empires and the Mughal era to the national freedom movement. By doing so, Nandalal Bose has taken us through a veritable pictorial journey across 4000 years of rich history, tradition and culture of the Indian subcontinent.

The Vedic period is represented by a scene of gurukula (forest hermitage school) and the epic period by images from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Then there are depictions of the lives of the Buddha and Mahavira, followed by scenes from the courts of Ashoka and Vikramaditya. There is a beautiful line drawing of the Nataraja from the Chola bronze tradition.

 

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