Last Thursday students in Mrs. Kruger's 3rd grade class explored the artist Paul Klee and watched a BrainPop video about the role self-portraits play in art.
Paul Klee was a Swiss born painter, with a unique style that was influenced by expressionism, cubism, surrealism, and orientalism. His written collections of lectures, Writings on Form and Design Theory are considered as important to modern art as Leonardo da Vinci’s written works were to the Renaissance. As a child, Klee was mainly oriented as a musician, having played the violin since he was eight, but in his teen years, he found that art allowed him freedom to explore his style and express his radical ideas. Although Klee is now considered a master of color theory, he spent a long time in his search for his sense of color. At first, Klee drew in black and white, saying he would never be a painter. But as an adult, after a visit to Tunisia, in which he was impressed by the quality of light, he had found his sense of color and began experimenting with his newfound decision to be a painter.
Students had a great time using watercolors, line drawings, and words to create abstracted self-portraits.