5th Grade Hundertwasser Flowers

Fifth grade students are learning about the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. We talked about how he lived through the second World War in Vienna, and how that affected his view of life. He remembers the craters that the bombs had left in the city, and how the rain filled them, and small life emerged from them eventually. We talked about how flowers can stand for the re-emergence of life in the spring after the long winter. We also looked at many of Hundertwasser's paintings and drawings, and focused on his paintings that showed flowers. Then we started our own mixed media process for creating our own unique flower drawing that would be inspired by Hundertwasser.

First fifth graders each painted two papers, one with warm colors, and the other with cool colors.

The next class we drew flowers on one paper and cut them out and added them to the other paper. Some students chose the cool color for a background, while others chose the warm color paper.



Last, students added a variety of lines with markers. Special thanks to the art blog Deep Space Sparkle for this wonderful lesson idea!