Matisse “Drawing with Scissors"
Mr. Johnson’s fifth grade art class studied the artwork of Henri Matisse. Matisse was born in 1869 and passed away in 1954. He is regarded as one of the greatest artists from the 20th century. His early artwork was classified as Traditional classic French Painting (bold colors.) Later on in life, Matisse was too weak to stand to paint due to an operation that never healed so he resorted to his paper cutout phase. These papercuts were basically carvings in colored paper, with scissor cutout shapes and then glued into a collage.
In our first project, students created a rectangle out of used wrapping paper. They used a wide range of color. Using paper cutting techniques, texture was achieved by being three-dimensional. The final stage was preparation for presentation by hiding their signature within their art.
In our second project, students created a random-floating collage of shapes. For this project only the primary and secondary colors could be used along with one neutral. To add texture, we used both negative and positive shapes along with paper cutting techniques to create a three dimensional effect. The final stage was to add a large distinguishing signature.
The students studied the following design elements of Art: Color (cool – warm – neutral,) shape (blob-circle-square-rectangle-triangle,) Lines (curved-straight-wavy,) and Texture (negative and positive.) The “Matisse” artwork may be viewed in the hallway of the grade school.
