Art trivia questions and answers
30 art trivia questions with the answers and a fact for each: painters and their masterpieces, movements and styles, the galleries that hold them, plus architecture from castles to skyscrapers. Read them as a quiz for yourself, use them for a pub quiz round, or press the button and play an Art round live with everyone answering on their own phone.
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The 30 art quiz questions
- 1Galleries
Leonardo's The Last Supper is painted on a wall in which city?
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CMilan
It's in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie; Leonardo painted on dry plaster rather than true fresco, so it began flaking in his own lifetime.
- 2Painters
Which Belgian surrealist painted a pipe captioned 'This is not a pipe'?
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BRené Magritte
Its real title is The Treachery of Images, and Magritte pointed out that you couldn't stuff it with tobacco.
- 3Bridges
The Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, crosses which river?
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BEast River
Emily Roebling effectively oversaw the final years of construction after her husband, the chief engineer, was left bedridden.
- 4Painters
Girl with a Pearl Earring was painted by…?
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DVermeer
Some experts argue the 'pearl' is far too big to be real and is probably polished tin or glass.
- 5Movements
Picasso developed Cubism alongside which fellow painter?
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DGeorges Braque
Braque compared the pair to two mountaineers roped together, so close was their work at the time.
- 6Architects
Who designed St Paul's Cathedral, rebuilt after the Great Fire of London?
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CChristopher Wren
Wren's tomb inside the cathedral carries a Latin epitaph meaning 'If you seek his monument, look around you'.
- 7Movements
Jackson Pollock's drip paintings belong to which movement?
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CAbstract Expressionism
Time magazine nicknamed him 'Jack the Dripper' in 1956.
- 8
Which Spanish artist painted Guernica, in response to a bombing in 1937?
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CPablo Picasso
Picasso refused to let it go to Spain while Franco ruled; it finally arrived in Madrid in 1981, eight years after the artist died.
- 9
Which artist famously cut off part of his own ear?
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CVincent van Gogh
It happened in Arles in December 1888 after a row with Gauguin. He sold only one painting in his lifetime.
- 10Castles
Edinburgh Castle sits on top of a…?
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CExtinct volcano
Castle Rock is a volcanic plug around 350 million years old — the glaciers later scraped away the softer rock around it.
- 11Styles
New York's Chrysler Building is a classic example of which style?
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DArt Deco
Its spire was assembled in secret inside the building and hoisted into place in 1930 to snatch the 'world's tallest' title.
- 12Towers
The Eiffel Tower was built as the entrance arch for which event?
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B1889 World's Fair
It was only meant to stand for 20 years, but was spared demolition partly because it proved so useful as a radio mast.
- 13Styles
The concrete-heavy style 'Brutalism' takes its name from the French for…?
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DRaw concrete
'Béton brut' was Le Corbusier's term, and his Unité d'Habitation in Marseille is often called the style's starting point.
- 14Painters
Self-portrait specialist Frida Kahlo came from which country?
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DMexico
Around 55 of her roughly 143 paintings are self-portraits — 'I am the subject I know best', she said.
- 15Galleries
Botticelli's The Birth of Venus hangs in which gallery?
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AUffizi
Venus floats ashore on a scallop shell, blown along by the wind god Zephyr.
- 16
Which flowers did Vincent van Gogh paint in a famous series of still lifes?
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DSunflowers
He painted them in Arles in 1888 to decorate the room of his friend Paul Gauguin, who was coming to stay.
- 17
Which Austrian artist painted The Kiss, famous for its shimmering gold leaf?
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AGustav Klimt
Painted around 1907-08 during Klimt's 'golden phase', it was bought by the Austrian state before it was even finished.
- 18
Who painted the Mona Lisa?
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CLeonardo da Vinci
It was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and missing for two years; the theft made it the most famous painting in the world.
- 19Skyscrapers
New York's Empire State Building was completed in which year?
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B1931
It went up in just over a year during the Great Depression, and was so empty at first that wags called it the 'Empty State Building'.
- 20Bridges
The Sydney Harbour Bridge is known to locals by which nickname?
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AThe Coathanger
Opened in 1932, it's the world's tallest steel arch bridge, and much of the steel was shipped out from Middlesbrough in England.
- 21Painters
Gustav Klimt, painter of the gold-drenched The Kiss, worked in which city?
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CVienna
Klimt's love of gold leaf ran in the family — his father was a gold engraver.
- 22Bridges
The Millau Viaduct, one of the world's tallest bridges, spans a valley in which country?
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AFrance
Its tallest mast reaches 343 metres from the ground — higher than the Eiffel Tower.
- 23
Who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?
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BMichelangelo
Four years' work — by a man who insisted he was a sculptor, not a painter.
- 24Sculpture
Marcel Duchamp's 1917 artwork Fountain was actually a…?
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CUrinal
Signed 'R. Mutt', it was rejected by the exhibition it was sent to, and the original was lost.
- 25Architects
Who designed Barcelona's still-unfinished Sagrada Família?
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AAntoni Gaudí
Construction began in 1882, and Gaudí, who died in 1926 with the church far from finished, is buried in its crypt.
- 26Styles
Pointed arches, flying buttresses and rose windows are hallmarks of which style?
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AGothic
Flying buttresses carried the roof's weight outside the walls, freeing them up for enormous stained-glass windows.
- 27
Which artist is famous for pop-art paintings in the style of comic strips, such as Whaam!?
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BRoy Lichtenstein
He hand-painted the tiny dots that cheap printing used, to make a canvas look mass-produced. Whaam! hangs at Tate Modern in London.
- 28Castles
What is the oldest part of the Tower of London, begun under William the Conqueror?
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AThe White Tower
It got its name in the 13th century when Henry III had the whole keep whitewashed.
- 29Landmarks
Mount Rushmore shows Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and which other president?
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ATheodore Roosevelt
Carving took 14 years, from 1927 to 1941, and remarkably nobody died during the work.
- 30Techniques
The dramatic contrast of light and shadow in Caravaggio's work is known as…?
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BChiaroscuro
Caravaggio's extreme version has its own name, tenebrism, from the Italian for 'darkness'.
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Art quiz FAQ
Can I use these art trivia questions for my own quiz night?
That is what the page is for. Read them out at a pub quiz, paste them into a work quiz or a family quiz night, and keep the answers hidden until the table has committed. If you would rather not keep score by hand, the button on this page runs a Art round on everyone's phones.
Are the answers on the page?
Yes. Every question has a "Show the answer" toggle with the right option and a one-line fact, so you can quiz yourself first or read straight through with the answers open.
How do I play an Art quiz round live?
Press "Play an Art round". It opens the host page with the Art category already picked. The room shows a join code, everyone else opens huddlequiz.com/join on their phone and types it, and ten questions later there is a winner on the board. No accounts and nothing to install.
Will the live game ask the same questions?
Some of them. The game draws at random from a bigger Art pool, of which this page is a sample, so a live round mixes questions you have read here with ones you have not.
How hard are they?
Mixed. They are written for adults and teenagers at pub-quiz level, so a table of four should get most of them between them and argue about the rest.