Matisse Inspired Collages

Last week in art we made collages based on the work of Henri Matisse.  The focus of the project, beyond learning about collages, was to talk about positive and negative space.  Positive and negative space relationships are hard for kids so we'll continue to practice as we do more drawing. 

The two Matisse works I emphasized were:

La Gerbe, image source:  Henri-Matisse.net

The Creole Dancer, image source:  Henri-Matisse.net

La Gerbe is an easy work to figure out where the positive and negative shapes are.  Everything colored is positive and everything white is negative.  The Creole Dancer is harder; just because it's a cut out doesn't make it positive space.  The figure is the positive and the background is the negative.



Each student got a 12" X 24" each piece of paper and were asked to fold it in half.  They were asked to keep the white background on one half of the paper like in La Gerbe above and in the other half, use one or more colors for a background like in The Creole Dancer.  Everyone had scissors and lots of colors of colored paper.  They were asked to cut out whatever shapes they wanted and glue those down to the background.  This project always leads to lots of variety and everyone enjoys it.


Here are some books we've enjoyed at home about Matisse:



For more information about Matisse's collages, check out the following websites:
Centre Pompidou
Matisse Museum
Matisse.net

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