Impressionism

Impressionism is a style of painting that began in Paris, France in the mid-1800s. Unlike artists before them, the impressionists painted most of their paintings outdoors and liked to portray natural subjects like trees, fields, and oceans. Impressionists would often take their materials outdoors and paint what they saw. This is called painting “en plein air.”

When impressionists painted pictures of people, they made them look like people you would see everyday. Rather than painting religious figures or royalty, impressionists painted people like the local tavern owner, a girl eagerly awaiting the beginning of a play, or workers resting in bales of hay. They often used their own family and friends as subjects in their paintings.


Before the impressionists, painters usually placed the main subject of their painting in the center. It was the first thing the viewer looked at and the background was not nearly as important. Before the impressionists, the main focus was, more often than not, placed in the middle of the painting. Impressionists often put more emphasis on the scene than on the person or main subject of the painting. To do this, they painted the main subject off to the side rather than in the center of the painting. An impressionist painting looks more like a photograph in this way. A photograph captures not only the main subject, but everything around the subject and everything in the photo is important. Photography was just becoming popular in the mid-1800s and influenced the way the impressionists looked at things.









The style was called impressionism because the artists were not as exacting about painting a realistic picture. They used many short brush strokes, applying paint thickly, to create the idea, or impression, of a subject. Vincent van Gogh is a good example of this technique. The paint on his canvases is often so thick it looks 3D. Look at this painting, Starry Night Over the Rhone, and notice the short brush strokes. Also, the painting is so thick that you can see the shadows from the paint. Because of the quick, short strokes, if you stand very close to an impressionist painting and look at it, often the painting won’t look like anything but a bunch of paint blobs. When you back away from it, though, you can see the whole picture.

Another characteristic of impressionist painting is the study of light. The way light changed the shadows and colors of subjects was of much interest to impressionists. For example, Claude Monet often painted in series, making many pictures of the same subject at different times throughout the day and in different seasons to see how the lighting affected his paintings. Look at these paintings of the Rouen Cathedral and see how the lighting changed the colors Monet used.

Paul Klee

Paul Klee ~ 
An Abstract artist from Switzerland.  
Born into a musical family - but he chose to be an artist.  His artwork shows his love of color and line, love of music and love of children's artwork.
By the age of seven he was playing the violin, and at age eight he was given a box of sidewalk chalk by his grandmother.

Abstract Art:  Art that does not attempt to represent recognizeable reality (or art that looks like a picture) but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors and textures.

Born 1879 - 1940

A Line is a dot that went for a walk.

Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view.

A cat lives in a house filled with toys, but every day she dreams of being free like the bird she watches through the window. Finally, with the bird's help, she is able to escape and dance on the roofs of the city by moonlight. This lovely story unfolds in a series of playful, brilliantly colourful illustrations based on the artist Paul Klee's work. Influenced by the artist's bright palette and use of shapes and line, the book culminates in a dazzling reproduction of Klee's Cat and Bird. Accompanied by information about the artist and this iconic painting, the book invites appreciation of the unfettered joyfulness that makes Klee one of the most universally loved artists of all time.

  Klee worked in many different media—oil paint, watercolor, ink, pastel, etching, and others. He often combined them into one work. He used canvas, burlap, muslin, linen, gauze, cardboard, metal foils, fabric, wallpaper, and newsprint.^[62] Klee employed spray paint, knife application, stamping, glazing, and impasto, and mixed media such as oil with watercolor, water color with pen and India ink, and oil with tempera

He often used geometric forms as well as letters, numbers, and arrows, and combined them with figures of animals and people. Some works were completely abstract.

 

Examples from Mr. Swanson's 4th Grade Class 2014-2015

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch 1863-1944
1921
Norwegian Expressionist Artist

The Scream - 1893 (4 versions between 1893 and 1910)

The Scream has been the target of a number of thefts and theft attempts. Some damage has been suffered in these thefts.

The 1910 tempera on board version of The Scream was stolen on 22 August 2004, during daylight hours, when masked gunmen entered the Munch Museum in Oslo and stole it and Munch's Madonna. A bystander photographed the robbers as they escaped to their car with the artwork.  The Munch Museum was closed for ten months for a security overhaul.On 12 February 1994, the same day as the opening of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, two men broke into the National Gallery, Oslo, and stole its version of The Scream, leaving a note reading "Thanks for the poor security". 

The 1895 pastel-on-board version of the painting, owned by Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen, sold at Sotheby's for a record US$120 million at auction on 2 May 2012. The bidding started at $40 million and lasted for over 12 minutes when Leon Black by phone gave the final offer of US$119,922,500, including the buyer's premium. Sotheby's said the painting was the most colorful and vibrant of the four versions painted by Munch and the only version whose frame was hand-painted by the artist to include his poem, detailing the work's inspiration. After the sale, Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer said the painting was "worth every penny", adding: "It is one of the great icons of art in the world and whoever bought it should be congratulated."

Originally - The Scream of Nature - One evening  I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture. This became The Scream.

Examples from Mr. Swanson's 4th Grade Class 2014-2015