For all my teachers who haven't got an Arts Specialist at your school and need to write up an Art program, I got you! Here is my list of Artists and Art movements that work well for each year group and what the curriculum wants to teach them.
Please note that many artists throughout history produce artworks that have inappropriate subject matter. Unfortunately, some artists on this list produce both artworks that are great for students to look at, and artworks that are not. Some artists also deal with heavy subject matter in the ideas they express, and some may express views that I personally do not agree with. I do not recommend letting young children research artists on their own for this reason. Please be careful.
Pre-Primary Piet Mondrian: For a focus on lines that he thought were beautiful, basic geometric shapes and primary colours. Mondrian was part of the De Stijl movement and liked to create artworks that were purely abstract and reduced to their bare minimum. Shake it up by letting your students create their own artwork using the shapes, lines and colours that they like! For resources on shapes and lines, check out these ones. Marc Chagall: For artworks that generate discussions, you can't go part Marc Chagall. (Check out specifically Paris through the Window and I and the Village). These expressionist pieces are bizarre and have humorous elements that will get your students talking about the things they can see. Encourage them to discuss what they like and dislike about them. Henri Mattisse: Bright and colourful and very happy looking, some of Mattisse's artworks are a great introduction to collage. A good way to introduce some new media testing for your class.
Year 1
Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun: I'm a huge fan of her work, personally! In particular, her Self Portrait with a Straw Hat is a good one for discussing with students. For example, how do we know what kind of person she is? What clues can we see in the artwork about what she does? This is a great springboard into self-portraits, and the importance of putting clues in your artwork so the audience knows what it is about.
Andy Warhol: For a project that assesses their skills at mixing colours, Andy Warhol is a good one. His Pop Art style is bright and colourful and will encourage them to use as many colours (in as many ways) as they like! A resource to teach students about mixing colours is available here. Installation Art: For a discussion on where and how you can display art, check out some installation pieces. Ai Weiwei does some very cool ones, and I really love the Falling Garden by Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger. The Gurasu Mori in Japan is also a sight to see! If your students are creating 3D artworks, creating their own installation to display them can be a real event. Year 2 Vincent Van Gogh: Van Gogh is a brilliant all rounder for the Year 2
curriculum. For warm and cool colours, look no further than Sunflowers (bonus discussion point: He created artwork to decorate his friend's room. Good springboard for reasons why people create art, and where to display them.) The Starry Night is a good one for lines with movement and spirals, as well as being a landscape for them to apply a horizon line.
Alison Brown: A contemporary Australian ceramic artist, she has created a beautiful series of vessels in the Tideline Series. These textured sculptures feature fossil-like impressions. My students created a beach inspired ceramic piece after looking at these ones. An early years lesson activity for texture is available here.
Henri Rousseau: Rousseau was a hobby painter who made up stories of all the places he had visited. His pictures are naive in their production, but tell fantastic stories of places far away. Great for discussing a story in an artwork
MC Escher: For a tessellating shapes artist, look no further than Escher. His brilliant black and white artworks will amaze your students at how he could seamlessly turn a fish into a bird. For a full Escher and tessellation project, check out this one.
Year 3 Utagawa Hiroshige or Hokusai: For a great example of Japanese ukiyo-e, check out Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. These artworks give examples of what were common subject matters in Japanese artworks (such as cherry blossoms and Mt Fuji) and give so many examples to inspire your students to create a landscape. My students created printing foam pictures after looking at these. An early years resource on space is available here. Maureen Hudson Nampijinpa: Nampijinpa's beautiful artworks contain many of the traditional symbols of Indigenous Australian culture. These symbols are a lot of fun for the students to identify the symbols and discover the story and meaning behind the artworks from another culture.
Monet and Impressionism: Brilliant for teaching tints and shades! Impressionism was a movement all about 'capturing a moment' in time, and as such, a huge amount of focus was put into the light and capturing the essence of the time of day. As such, these artworks, particularly the lily pond pieces, have a lot of tints and shades. The students will love the splodgy painting techniques. For a full lesson plan on Monet, click here (Bonus that as a landscape, you can teach them about space too).
Year 4 Shaun Tan: Shaun Tan's wordless book The Arrival is so chock full of symbolism, your students will be able to read the story without any words. Compare the two cities in the book to discover how the artist expressed mood using shapes, colour and lines. Chris Jordan: For an artist with an environmental message who uses intensity to express a mood, check out Whale by Chris Jordan. This picture of a whale is constructed with 50,000 plastic bags, which, according to the artist statement, is the estimated number of plastic bags floating in each square mile ocean. Contrast this artwork to the idyllic paintings of Hundertwasser, who uses bright harmonious colours to express harmony with nature. (Hundertwasser activity available free here) Realism: For a great compare and contrast, try comparing the drama of the Baroque artwork The Night Watch with the ordinariness of the funeral in Gustave Courbet's A Burial at Ornans. The way the artist painted the scene 'warts and all', from the muddy shoes to the gritty subject matter, contrasts strongly with the idealized and heroic battle where their uniforms are squeaky clean!
Year 5
Art Nouveau: Mucha, in particular. This beautiful decorative movement has several very clear influences that are easy for students to understand. With Art Nouveau, you will be able to teach your students about organic shape and line with movement, as well as using nature as an inspiration in their own artwork. For an Art Nouveau project, check out this one. Franz Marc: For expressive and natural colour, have a look at the cool artworks of Franz Marc. Learning about drawing animals is a brilliant lesson in shape, too. (Also check out Picasso's Blue Period and anything by Pip and Pop to explore how we can create mood through colour)
Vanitas artworks: Vanitas still-life artworks are highly symbolic of the brevity of life, Pieter Claesz has a very beautiful one. Please take care with this subject, although the symbolism is easy for students to understand, it can be a heavy subject matter. As a Christian, I approached it with the idea that life is very short- we need to spend our time on earth doing things that are important and live a godly life, which, in essence, is what the Vanitas artworks are saying. These artworks juxtapose things like jewels and musical instruments (symbols of frivolity) with reminders of death such as skulls, bubbles (symbolic of brevity) and rotting fruit or flowers. It can be an interesting springboard into still-life artworks, but again, assess your student's maturity. Albert Namatjira: A very famous Indigenous Australian artist, known for creating beautiful watercolour landscapes in the European style. A good artist to focus on when teaching about creating an illusion of depth. Roy Lichtenstein: Pop Art has an easy to understand motive for making Art - getting popular things into a gallery space. Comics are brilliant fun and dot painting is a different technique that can be so versatile. Use it to teach your students about the use of colour in an artwork to express a message, or using different weights of line.
Year 6 Grant Wood: American Gothic is a brilliant example of the use of space in an artwork, and being one of the most parodied artworks ever, it can be a lot of fun, too. A painting created in the depression of the 1930's, you can see why the man in the picture looks menacing and un-trusting, and it is a great discussion about the influences of the context on the artwork.
Art Deco: As a purely decorative movement, this style of art has roots in the fashions of the day. It is easy to link the context of the artwork to the geometric style, motifs and materials the artists used. My students created a beautiful Art Deco Pencil Holder after learning about this movement, and I was able to teach them how to use texture, too!
Surrealism: A lot of surrealist artists used distorted senses of perspective to create their dream-like artworks. Artists like Escher with his staircases, and Rene Magritte with Le Blanc Seing warped things like overlap and diminishing perspective to create a confusing dreamscape. When teaching proportions and one-point perspective, these are some good artists to talk about! Please note though that some surrealist artworks and the ideas behind the movement can be quite disturbing, so take care with your students. I preferred to focus on the way the artists made their artworks seem like a dream by making one or two things 'not quite right'. Some lesson resources on space are available here.
Pictures on this page are copyrighted, please don't copy my pictures for your resources. Photos were taken by me from various museums. If you would like to use my resources in your classroom they are available here.
Important to note: I am writing from my own experiences in the classroom and do not in any way guarantee these projects will work for you. These are a guide only. Some of these project ideas are exactly as I did them in the classroom, others have slight changes to reflect how I would do them next time. You know your student's capabilities and behaviour best. As with anything, always check the safety of all materials and processes and read product instructions carefully before you introduce them to students. Consider the age and maturity of your students before trying any of my ideas.
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