Kandinsky Project: Part One

On Wednesdays I teach in a Year 7 and 8 at a school in Khandallah, Wellington. Usually I teach all of the curriculum areas but last term the school had a huge focus on art. Each class was responsible for creating art pieces throughout the term for inclusion in an art exhibition in the final week of the term. The school had themed the art exhibition around Countries of the World. There was huge scope for learning about artists and art movements.

The class that I teach in was allocated Russia as a their country for study. Wassily Kandinsky was from Russia and is an important art history figure who is known as the ‘pioneer of abstract art.’ It made sense to introduce the class to his artworks.

We spent an afternoon learning about the style of abstract art and then completed a fun little warm up activity that I found online called ‘Roll-a-Wassily-Kandinsky.’ The students rolled a dice and added Kandinsky-inspired shapes to their artwork based on the instructions.

This was a fun activity to loosen up and get used to the idea of abstraction. Many of the kids said that they had a lot of fun creating their artworks.