Art is about more than being able to paint a picture or create a sculpture. It is about understanding the world around us and our place in it. During art lessons we are teaching our children to explore their understanding of the world and to express that through their art work using a range of materials. They also learn about a number of significant artists, their work and what it tells us about their view of the world when they were alive. Teachers choose artists from a range of periods depending on what they are learning about in other subjects and also depending upon what exhibitions are on display in the many art galleries of London.
An Enquiry Process in Art (Sketching)
Stage | Key Questions |
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Investigation | Investigate materials used in the artists work and the different ways they can be used. |
Introduce Significant Artist | What was their place in the world? What were they influenced by e.g. what were social influences? Which artists influenced them? Who did they influence? |
Experimentation | Focus on ideas and techniques e.g. What marks can you make? How did you make them? Look at 2 or 3 different ways and choosing their favourite one. |
Copy of Artists Work | What materials did they use? What effects have the created and how? Children look closely as a painting asking questions such as what does it look like, why does it look like the way it does etc |
Original Piece | Opportunities for reviewing and improving What do I like? What would I like to improve? How could I make those improvements? How does it relate to the artist we have been studying - doesn't have to look exactly like it but children should be able to justify a connection be it ideas or techniques |
Techniques and Materials Learnt
Autumn | Spring | Summer | |
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Year 1 | Painting | Textiles | |
Year 2 | Collage | 3D Sculpture | Digital Media |
Year 3 | Painting | Textiles | |
Year 4 | Collage | 3D Sculpture | Digital Media |
Year 5 | Painting | Textiles | |
Year 6 | Collage | 3D Sculpture | Digital Media |
Technique | Years 1 and 2 | Years 3 and 4 | Years 5 and 6 |
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Drawing |
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Painting |
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Collage |
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3D Sculpture |
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Textiles |
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Digital Media |
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Develop Ideas |
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Art History
Year 1/2 | Year 3/4 | Year 5/6 | |
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To take Inspiration from the greats (classic and modern) |
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Art Periods/Movements | Characteristics | Chief Artists and Major Works | Historical Events |
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Stone Age (30,000 b.c.–2500 b.c.) |
Cave painting, fertility goddesses, megalithic structures | Lascaux Cave Painting, Woman of Willendorf, Stonehenge | Ice Age ends (10,000 b.c.–8,000 b.c.); New Stone Age and first permanent settlements (8000 b.c.–2500 b.c.) |
Mesopotamian (3500 b.c.–539 b.c.) |
Warrior art and narration in stone relief | Standard of Ur, Gate of Ishtar, Stele of Hammurabi's Code | Sumerians invent writing (3400 b.c.); Hammurabi writes his law code (1780 b.c.); Abraham founds monotheism |
Egyptian (3100 b.c.–30 b.c.) |
Art with an afterlife focus: pyramids and tomb painting | Imhotep, Step Pyramid, Great Pyramids, Bust of Nefertiti | Narmer unites Upper/Lower Egypt (3100 b.c.); Rameses II battles the Hittites (1274 b.c.); Cleopatra dies (30 b.c.) |
Greek and Hellenistic (850 b.c.–31 b.c.) |
Greek idealism: balance, perfect proportions; architectural orders(Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) | Parthenon, Myron, Phidias, Polykleitos, Praxiteles | Athens defeats Persia at Marathon (490 b.c.); Peloponnesian Wars (431 b.c.–404 b.c.); Alexander the Great's conquests (336 b.c.–323 b.c.) |
Roman (500 b.c.– a.d. 476) |
Roman realism: practical and down to earth; the arch | Augustus of Primaporta, Colosseum, Trajan's Column, Pantheon | Julius Caesar assassinated (44 b.c.); Augustus proclaimed Emperor (27 b.c.); Diocletian splits Empire (a.d. 292); Rome falls (a.d. 476) |
Indian, Chinese, and Japanese (653 b.c.–a.d. 1900) |
Serene, meditative art, and Arts of the Floating World | Gu Kaizhi, Li Cheng, Guo Xi, Hokusai, Hiroshige | Birth of Buddha (563 b.c.); Silk Road opens (1st century b.c.); Buddhism spreads to China (1st–2nd centuries a.d.) and Japan (5th century a.d.) |
Byzantine and Islamic (a.d. 476–a.d.1453) |
Heavenly Byzantine mosaics; Islamic architecture and amazing maze-like design | Hagia Sophia, Andrei Rublev, Mosque of Córdoba, the Alhambra | Justinian partly restores Western Roman Empire (a.d. 533–a.d. 562); Iconoclasm Controversy (a.d. 726–a.d. 843); Birth of Islam (a.d. 610) and Muslim Conquests (a.d. 632–a.d. 732) |
Middle Ages (500–1400) |
Celtic art, Carolingian Renaissance, Romanesque, Gothic | St. Sernin, Durham Cathedral, Notre Dame, Chartres, Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto | Viking Raids (793–1066); Battle of Hastings (1066); Crusades I–IV (1095–1204); Black Death (1347–1351); Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) |
Early and High Renaissance (1400–1550) |
Rebirth of classical culture | Ghiberti's Doors, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael | Gutenberg invents movable type (1447); Turks conquer Constantinople (1453); Columbus lands in New World (1492); Martin Luther starts Reformation (1517) |
Venetian and Northern Renaissance (1430–1550) |
The Renaissance spreads north- ward to France, the Low Countries, Poland, Germany, and England | Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Dürer, Bruegel, Bosch, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden | Council of Trent and Counter-Reformation (1545–1563); Copernicus proves the Earth revolves around the Sun (1543 |
Mannerism (1527–1580) |
Art that breaks the rules; artifice over nature | Tintoretto, El Greco, Pontormo, Bronzino, Cellini | Magellan circumnavigates the globe (1520–1522) |
Baroque (1600–1750) |
Splendor and flourish for God; art as a weapon in the religious wars | Reubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Palace of Versailles | Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants (1618–1648) |
Neoclassical (1750–1850) |
Art that recaptures Greco-Roman grace and grandeur | David, Ingres, Greuze, Canova | Enlightenment (18th century); Industrial Revolution (1760–1850) |
Romanticism (1780–1850) |
The triumph of imagination and individuality | Caspar Friedrich, Gericault, Delacroix, Turner, Benjamin West | American Revolution (1775–1783); French Revolution (1789–1799); Napoleon crowned emperor of France (1803) |
Realism (1848–1900) |
Celebrating working class and peasants; en plein airrustic painting | Corot, Courbet, Daumier, Millet | European democratic revolutions of 1848 |
Impressionism (1865–1885) |
Capturing fleeting effects of natural light | Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cassatt, Morisot, Degas | Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871); Unification of Germany (1871) |
Post-Impressionism (1885–1910) | A soft revolt against Impressionism | Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat | Belle Époque (late-19th-century Golden Age); Japan defeats Russia (1905) |
Fauvism and Expressionism (1900–1935) |
Harsh colors and flat surfaces (Fauvism); emotion distorting form | Matisse, Kirchner, Kandinsky, Marc | Boxer Rebellion in China (1900); World War (1914–1918) |
Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism, Constructivism, De Stijl (1905–1920) | Pre– and Post–World War 1 art experiments: new forms to express modern life | Picasso, Braque, Leger, Boccioni, Severini, Malevich | Russian Revolution (1917); American women franchised (1920) |
Dada and Surrealism (1917–1950) | Ridiculous art; painting dreams and exploring the unconscious | Duchamp, Dalí, Ernst, Magritte, de Chirico, Kahlo | Disillusionment after World War I; The Great Depression (1929–1938); World War II (1939–1945) and Nazi horrors; atomic bombs dropped on Japan (1945) |
Abstract Expressionism (1940s–1950s) and Pop Art (1960s) | Post–World War II: pure abstraction and expression without form; popular art absorbs consumerism | Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Warhol, Lichtenstein | Cold War and Vietnam War (U.S. enters 1965); U.S.S.R. suppresses Hungarian revolt (1956) Czechoslovakian revolt (1968) |
Postmodernism and Deconstructivism (1970– ) | Art without a center and reworking and mixing past styles | Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Anselm Kiefer, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid | Nuclear freeze movement; Cold War fizzles; Communism collapses |