Mommio: Art Class- Modern Art- Cubism- Picasso

Today in our Artistic Pursuits class we continued our study of Pablo Picasso and took a closer look at Cubism, an art movement started by Picasso and Braque in the early 1900's.  Cubism is one of the first forms of abstract art.  In Cubism artists turned natural forms and shapes into geometric shapes, and then mixed them up- creating a fractured, puzzle-like piece of art.  We watched this video of Picasso's Cubist period and discussed what we saw afterwards.

The kids noticed musicians, dark colors, shapes and lots of nudity.

We also took a look at two different paintings of women done one year apart by Picasso, by doing this we can see the beginnings of his new style.  

Gertrude Stein, 1906

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

Then the kids created their own cubist portraits with a fun puzzle project.  First they drew a self portrait in pencil on watercolor paper.

Next they painted the portrait using watercolor paints.

When their paintings were dry, they cut them apart in various shapes and glued them down onto a colored piece of construction paper- in any order they liked.

Finally, they took another color of construction paper and cut some shapes out of it, glueing them on top of their portrait wherever they thought it looked good. 

Here are their completed cubist self-portaits.  For homework they will create a cubist painting of another subject using the same process. Next time we will be creating another fun version of the cubist self-portrait.