Skip to Main Content
Kandinsky Craze

Kandinsky Craze

Wassily Kandinsky combined colors and shapes in a way that captivated and stimulated the audience's senses and emotions. Students will create art in the style of Kandinsky using a striking technique.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper Towels

Steps

  • Step 1

    Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter and one of the pioneers of abstract art. He believed that color directly affects a person's emotions. He also felt that primary shapes corresponded with specific colors. He even distributed a survey to his students at the Bauhaus asking how they'd assign the primary colors (blue, red, yellow) to primary shapes.

  • Step 2

    Have students view images of Kandinsky's art. Some examples might include "Yellow-Red-Blue," "Swinging," and "Transverse Lines." Have them take note of the interplay between the colors and the shapes. Ask them to sketch a design on black construction paper featuring shapes and lines in the style of Kandinsky that they will then create using a striking art technique.

  • Step 3

    Have students draw with white school glue that will dry to clear, hard, raised lines and shapes. When the glue is dry ask them to fill the shapes and background with colorful chalk and use a tissue or paper towel to blend the chalk into that area.

  • Step 4

    Display the finished works and discuss how the colors and shapes evoke different emotions in different students and stimulate our senses.

Standards

ARTS: Explore and invent art-making techniques and approaches.

ARTS: Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.

ARTS: Speculate about processes an artist uses to create a work of art.

Adaptations

Students can study other artists who are famously known for their use of colorful shapes. Alexander Calder (1898-1976) was an American artist known for his mobiles and stabiles, many of which feature primary colors and geometric shapes. Have students look at images of his work. Then challenge them to create an artistic mobile. They might draw colorful shapes on heavy paper, then cut them out and string them together on wire. Or they might sculpt shapes out of Model Magic and attach to a wire.

Kandinsky had synesthesia, which is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another. When he listened to music he saw visions of color. Have students listen to a piece of music and draw along to see how the music affected their art. Perhaps they drew faster during louder and faster passages. Did they use looser or tighter designs and muted colors during slower or quieter parts?