 ABOUT SURREALISM Surrealism is a strange or wacky view of life that often resembles dreams. In real life, René Magritte spent his days in Brussels, Belgium painting in his apartment. He dressed like an everyday man, wearing a black suit and bowler hat. Many of Magritte’s paintings feature a bowler hat. One of Magritte’s most famous paintings, pictured above, shows a man’s face covered by an apple. He enjoyed making these types of strange portraits and used different everyday objects to cover or partially cover the subject’s face in each one. We talked about what came to mind when they looked at thr artwork and I got a variety of different and interesting answers, among them...maybe he just doesnt want to show his face, he is hiding, he is saying something about forbidden fruit. The children could place any object over thr face of the man and I got to highlight how interesting it is that the time we live in reflects our art and our experience of life.
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 Franz Marc was born in 1880 in Germany. With a father who was a professional landscape painter, he was exposed to art at a young age. His unique approach to painting animals from “the inside out to show their soul” resulted in unusual and bright colours. He sought out to provide a spiritual connection between the animals he painted and the viewer through the colours that he used. In 1911 Marc, along with other artists formed a group called Der Blaue Reiter which means The Blue Rider in German. They set out to create paintings that expressed color in new ways.Their art style was called Expressionism. Marc’s artistic career continued even after he was drafted to fight in World War I. He painted large canvas covers in pointillistic camouflage to disguise artillery on the ground from aircrafts flying above. In 1916, Marc was killed in action during the Battle of Verdun.  There is such a wide variety to choose from but I settled on the colourful and bombastic Pierrot Grenade as much for the glorious use of colour as for this character's notorious oratory skill! So we talked a little about the characters they were familiar with and then watched a video of a Pierrot Grenade in action :) They also saw a piece by local artist Rebecca Foster pictured above which we used for inspiration.  The Doodlebugs got to make the Pierrot Grenade today :) This was a fun project and they really got into cutting up the paper into strips and of course it goes without saying that any time they get to use glue is a good day! We chatted about the traditional carnival characters and talked about the Pierrot Grenade and they looked at a few pictures for inspiration.  Picasso is not known for his paintings of animals but a few emerged - The Rooster (Le Coq) in 1938 and Cat Catching a Bird in 1939. Many students are familiar with the way Picasso showed both the profile and frontal face views in his portrait paintings and the same is true for The Rooster (Le Coq). The beak and eyes are drawn in this familiar way. Which, of course, is what makes this rooster project different and a lot more fun than drawing a regular rooster. Pablo Picasso was born in Spain in 1881. He had trouble in school but his father, an art teacher, didn’t mind as Pablo preferred to draw instead. He moved to Paris to attend art school when he was 23. He was quite poor and painted sad scenes. This was called his BLUE PERIOD. Picasso experimented with his art and along with a friend, he created CUBISM. Cubists painted objects from many angles and ignored round shapes and the rules of perspective. Did you know… • When Picasso fell in love, he painted happier events like circuses and children. This was called his ROSE period. • Picasso created more than 20,000 pieces of art in his lifetime. • Picasso achieved much fame in his lifetime • He put a date on every piece of artwork he created because he wanted to create a timeline of his art Henri Matisse was born in 1869 in a small town in France. His parents owned a general store and wanted Henri to take over the family business but Henri decided to become a lawyer instead. At 20, he got very sick and had to be admitted to the hospital. His mother bought him a box of paints and from that day on, Henri decided to be an artist. Matisse was called the “King of Color”. He recognized that color played a big part in how we perceive life. Later in life, Matisse developed cancer and was bed ridden. He still created art in his bed by using a bamboo stick tipped with chalk. He drew on the ceiling! He also started cutting out shapes with scissors and called this art form, “drawing with scissors.” Did you know… • That Matisse and Picasso were both friends and rivals? • That Matisse joined a group of painters and because of their wild colors, they were known as “Fauves” which means “wild beasts.” • Matisse painted with a few colors and a few lines at a time. |
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Be a fly on the wall in our art room! Take a look at what we do, how we do it and the smiles that I get to see week after week :) Archives
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