"I am leaving to be at peace, to rid myself of the influence of civilization. I only want to create art that is simple, very simple. To do that I need to renew myself in unsoiled nature." -Gauguin
We began learning about Paul Gauguin last year. We chose to do this mini mural below using pre-mixed paints to get the imaginary colors he was famous for.
I wanted to begin with one of his paintings from Tahitii because it is there that he felt he had found the ideal unspoiled life he was looking for. I found it interesting that thougth he abandoned his wife and children in search of his dream of living amongst the uncivilized and paint, he kept pictures of all of his children lined up in order of their ages on his mantle where ever he found himself. We learned from the section in Van Gogh and Friends about him that he often wrote them letters.
To learn more about his indiviual paintings I made 12 Montessori cards with the name of each work typed on the bottom of the card. I printed two copies of each card and we played concentration and go fish with them. Once they had the feel for the names I required them to be able to say the name correctly before securing the cards to their own pile.
To learn more about a few paintings,
we colored Still Life with Three Puppies,
We learned more about Gauguin when we read The Yellow House. Seeing him with Van Gogh really shed some light on his personality. And becasue we had already learned alot about Van Gogh it was fun to do this notebooking page about their differences and similarities. We also filled out an artist bio sheet and added our favorite dover art stickers to the bottom.
Self Portrait
So, though Gauguin was not a saint, he has lovely colors and ways of doing art that enriched us and inspired us to use our colors with more imagination and boldness. And though we began our study of his art last year and finished it up again this year we hadn't fprgotten what we knew about him and have gained alot from knowing more about this fascinating painter.
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