Lesson 33 - Vasilij Kandinskij Rainbow Circles

Today we learned about Russian born art theorist and artist Vasilij Kandinskij (1866-1944) (also spelled Wassily Kandinsky). He was born in Moscow and began painting at the age of 30 at the University of Dorpat. He is credited with painting the first purely abstract works. He also lived in Munich, Germany where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. He eventually moved to France and lived there the rest of his life.

His abstract paintings use color to show emotion (instead of painting realistically), which fits into children’s developmental level at this age.

To make our project, we used black paper as our base. We also used pre-cut circles in varying sizes and bright colors, as well as pre-cut strips to frame our working area on the paper.

First the children glued the strips onto the base paper, dividing it into 4 sections. Next they glued the largest circle in each of the four areas. They added the medium sized circle on top next, and the smaller circle on top of that one. The children chose contrasting bright colors that made the picture “pop”.

Following this, the children decorated their artwork by using markers to add dots, swirls, etc., to the circles and the dividing strips.

Everyone had fun gluing the multi-colored strips of paper and circles. This showed their ability to choose complementary as well as contrasting colors to make a personal statement.

This was a very relaxing project, and many children had the chance to socialize with each other while working on their art.

Even though the children all worked with the same components to make this project, their final products were all very individual and very colorful.