1st Grade Picasso

Last week 1st Graders looked at Pablo Picasso's Bouquet of Peace from 1958.  Students discussed what they thought this painting was showing, some thought it was someone giving flowers to a loved one, some thought it was a birthday or an appology.  It gave us an oppurtunity to talk about why art is made, this work was intended to show that brotherhood is a neccessary element to peace.  But what we see and what the artist intended can be two very different things.

Then we talked about what in the painting we liked and disliked and how we would change the painting to make it what we wanted.  Finally studnets were asked to paint the picture their own way.
 This student decieded she did not like the hands in the painting and so she took them out and addd a vase instead.  I also love her addition of the yellow cat in the background.
 I loved how dramatic the changes were in some of the boys paintings.  One of them replaced the flowers with a fishing pole because that was where he found peace.  This student added the spider and spider web instead of flowers.  Each one was very unique.
I love anytime students can take a few minutes and really think critically about art and artist as a part of our creative process.