Art is a form of creative expression that traces back to the Prehistoric era. Test your knowledge with the best art trivia questions and answers.
Art is a way to express imagination and creativity. It’s also a way to document life.
According to the Met Museum, art dates back to 8000 B.C.
Throughout human history, there have been many art eras.
Examples include Romanticism, Realism, Renaissance, and Modern.
Regardless of the type of art, it’s a significant part of life.
If you’re an artist, art-lover, or teacher, test your knowledge with the following art trivia questions and answers.
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Ultimate art trivia questions and answers
Question: Who painted Mona Lisa?
Answer: Leonardo da Vinci.
Question: Was art ever an Olympic sport?
Answer: Yes, art was in the Olympics from 1912 to 1952.
Question: What was the subject of the earliest known paintings?
Answer: Animals
Question: Where’s The Metropolitan Museum of Art?
Answer: New York.
Question: Where’s the Louvre Museum?
Answer: Paris, France.
Question: What was Pablo Picasso’s style of art?
Answer: Cubism.
Question: What was Salvador Dalí’s art style?
Answer: Surrealism.
Question: Who designed the Eiffel Tower?
Answer: Gustave Eiffel.
Question: What does hue mean in art?
Answer: Color.
Question: What’s the only piece Michelangelo signed?
Answer: The Pieta.
Question: Which type of paint dries the quickest?
Answer: Acrylic paint.
Question: Who painted The Starry Night?
Answer: Vincent van Gogh
Question: What’s op art?
Answer: It stands for optical art. It’s a style of art that uses optical illusions.
Question: What’s the process of joining pieces of steel in a sculpture?
Answer: Welding
Question: Who is the artist of the Statue of Liberty?
Answer: Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.
Question: What do you call the art of folding paper?
Answer: Origami.
Question: What kind of cans did Andy Warhol famously paint?
Answer: Campbell’s Soup Cans.
Question: What are crayons made of?
Answer: Wax.
Question: Who was the artist that inhaled his own work?
Answer: Willard Wigan.
Question: Which artist sold a 10-foot-tall balloon dog for $58.4 million?
Answer: Jeff Koons.
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Art trivia for kids
Question: What are the three primary colors?
Answer: Red, yellow, and blue.
Question: What’s abstract art?
Answer: Art that’s not based on reality.
Question: What’s value in art?
Answer: The lightness or darkness of a color.
Question: How do you get a secondary color?
Answer: Mix two primary colors.
Question: What’s composition in art?
Answer: How elements in a work of art are arranged.
Question: What’s the foreground?
Answer: The part in a piece that’s closest to the viewer.
Question: What does genre mean in art?
Answer: The type of art.
Question: What’s scale in art?
Answer: The size of an object in relation to another.
Question: What’s color temperature?
Answer: The warmth or coolness of a color.
Question: What’s a doodle?
Answer: Something you draw out of boredom.
Question: What’s a focal point in art?
Answer: The part of an artwork created to catch the most attention.
Question: What are highlights in art?
Answer: The brightest parts of the artwork.
Art history trivia
Question: What period came before the Gothic Era?
Answer: Romanesque.
Question: Which centuries was the Renaissance in?
Answer: From the 14th to the 17th century.
Question: Which period had a focus on individualism and moved away from the traditions of the Enlightenment?
Answer: Romanticism.
Question: Which style of art is characterized by rich and deep colors, along with intense light and dark shadows?
Answer: Baroque.
Question: In what century did Mannerism end?
Answer: The 16th century.
Question: What year did Pablo Picasso paint Guernica?
Answer: 1937.
Question: What year did Vincent van Gogh paint Café Terrace at Night?
Answer: 1888.
Question: What year did Claude Monet paint Impression, Sunrise?
Answer: 1872.
Question: What year did Diego Velázquez paint Las Meninas?
Answer: 1656.
Question: What year did Jan van Eyck paint Arnolfini Portrait?
Answer: 1434.
Question: What year did Salvador Dalí paint The Persistence of Memory?
Answer: 1931.
Question: Between what years was the Rococo period?
Answer: 1740 to 1770.
Question: Which art era focused on unblended color and accurate depictions of natural light?
Answer: Impressionism.
Question: Which art style focuses on the emotions or responses of a person?
Answer: Expressionism.
Question: How long did the Cubism period last?
Answer: Seven years (1907-1914).
Question: When did Leonardo da Vinci draw Vitruvian Man?
Answer: 1490.
Question: What did Wassily Kandinsky do in 1913?
Answer: Kandinsky produced the first abstract art.
Famous art trivia
Question: Who painted The Birth of Venus?
Answer: Sandro Botticelli.
Question: Who painted The Scream?
Answer: Edvard Munch.
Question: Which painting is Johannes Vermeer’s best-known piece?
Answer: Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Question: Where is The Last Supper currently located?
Answer: Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy.
Question: What is Gustav Klimt’s most famous painting?
Answer: The Kiss.
Question: Who painted American Gothic?
Answer: Grant Wood.
Question: Who’s the artist behind the Water Lilies?
Answer: Claude Monet.
Question: Who painted The Night Watch (Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq)?
Answer: Rembrandt van Rijn.
Question: Who painted The Sleeping Gypsy?
Answer: Henri Rousseau.
Question: Who painted Dürer’s Rhinoceros?
Answer: Albrecht Dürer.
Question: Who painted Whistler’s Mother?
Answer: James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
Question: Who painted The Third of May 1808?
Answer: Francisco Goya.
Question: Where was the Venus of Willendorf sculpture found?
Answer: Austria (Willendorf).
Question: What sculpture is Auguste Rodin known for?
Answer: The Thinker.
Question: Who designed the Guggenheim Museum?
Answer: Frank Lloyd Wright.
Question: Who designed The Lotus Temple?
Answer: Fariborz Sahba.
Question: Who painted Liberty Leading the People?
Answer: Eugène Delacroix.
Question: Who sculpted Venus de Milo?
Answer: Alexandros of Antioch.
Question: Who painted Nighthawks?
Answer: Edward Hopper.
Question: Where is The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo?
Answer: Sistine Chapel.
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Art techniques trivia
Question: What’s hatching?
Answer: Drawing closely-spaced parallel lines.
Question: What’s stippling in painting?
Answer: Using small dots to create a picture.
Question: What’s the name for the technique that involves loosely applying a thin layer of paint with a dry brush over an existing layer?
Answer: Scumbling.
Question: What’s another name for wet-on-wet painting?
Answer: Alla Prima.
Question: What’s allover painting?
Answer: When you cover an entire canvas with paint.
Question: What’s blending in art?
Answer: Mixing two or more colors or shades to create a smooth transition.
Question: What’s underdrawing?
Answer: A preliminary sketch.
Question: What do you call a pattern or image made of many small pieces of stone, glass, or ceramics?
Answer: A mosaic.
Question: What’s space in art?
Answer: The empty areas.
Question: What does tint mean in art?
Answer: Adding white to any color to make it lighter.
Question: What’s line quality?
Answer: The thickness of a line.
Question: What are hard edges in painting?
Answer: A clean transition between two shapes.
Trivia about artists
Question: What disfigured Michelangelo?
Answer: Michelangelo’s rival, Pietro Torrigiano, hit him in the nose with a mallet.
Question: What period was Peter Paul Rubens from?
Answer: Baroque.
Question: What is Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) best-known for?
Answer: Madonna paintings.
Question: Who was the most celebrated female painter of the 17th century?
Answer: Artemisia Gentileschi (Source: The National Gallery).
Question: Who is known as the father of Baroque painting?
Answer: Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio.
Question: What painting technique is Jackson Pollock known for?
Answer: The drip technique.
Question: Which Mexican painter is famous for self-portraits?
Answer: Frida Kahlo.
Question: What movement did Henri Matisse lead?
Answer: The Fauvism movement.
Question: Who’s known as the Mother of American Modernism?
Answer: Georgia O’Keeffe.
Question: What’s Ludwig Mies van der Rohe known as?
Answer: One of the pioneers of modern architecture.
Question: Who was the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize?
Answer: Zaha Hadid.
Question: What type of art was Utagawa Hiroshige famous for?
Answer: Ukiyo-e.
Question: How many pieces did Paul Gauguin paint?
Answer: 516.
Question: What period was Angelika Kauffmann from?
Answer: Neoclassicism.
Question: What materials did Donatello use in his sculptures?
Answer: Marble, bronze, and wood.
Question: Which artist is known for abstract color field paintings?
Answer: Mark Rothko.
Question: Which artist was known as a polymath?
Answer: Leonardo da Vinci. He was also a draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect.
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Featured image by Canva and David Em/Box of Puns.