Mommio: Art Class- Kandinsky

Today in our Artistic Pursuits study of modern artists we learned about Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944).

Kandinsky was a Russian born painter who is known as one of the founders of the abstract art movement.  He was one of the very first painters to paint pictures with no recognizable objects in them, instead he preferred to express his thoughts and feelings through the use of color and shape.

As a young child, Kandinsky was diagnosed with synaesthesia cognate- a condition that caused him to "hear" colors as music and "see" sounds as colors.  This led to his particular style of free flowing art later on.
We watched a video that showed some of his work and discussed how his paintings make us feel and the idea that Kandinsky was drawing music.

Afterwards we turned on some music (we tried several types to express different moods) and got to work making our own abstract paintings.  For the first pictures the kids used an oil pastel to draw lines and curves all over their paper.

They then used gouache paints to fill in the spaces with color.

Truly abstract art!

That was so fun and quick that we moved on and made another painting, inspired by Kandinsky's famous Squares with Concentric Circles painting.

First the kids folded their paper so that the fold lines created 12 equal squares.

Next they used black oil pastels to draw concentric circles inside each square.

 Finally they finished the paintings off with their gouache paints.

Here are the colors they heard in the music as we painted today.