Art History- Alberto Giacometti

It is never too early to teach your children about Art.  It will develop their creativity and teach them through hands on experience the different techniques used to create or in this case recreate art.  In the Art History posts we will try to create mastepieces using different art techniques sometime similar to the ones that the artist used himself.  If all failes at least our children will be able to spot the works of Monet, Warhol, Van Gogh, Pollock and others.  Let’s start shell we?

First I would like to say that I love Giacometti, absolutely love him.  There are few pieces of his artwork at the Hirshhorn Museum (National Galery of Art, Smithsonian) and every time my family goes to DC I want to drag them there.  Of course both the kids and my husband would rather go to the Air and Space Museum,  Natural History Museum or pretty much anywhere other then Hirshhorn Again.   Personally I could live there and imagined on numerous times being locked in there overnight pretending like it was my house, without children of course just in case they break something.  God knows I will never ever be able to afford anything in there even if I win the lottery.

So back to GIACOMETTI.  Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, printmaker and draughtsman but it will be his sculpting that he will focus on.

You will need aluminum foil, pipe cleaners and some sort of a clay (we used playdoh which was very soft).  If you are very thrifty and do not want to waste perfectly good foil you can always recycle non used clean edges from the foil you used in cooking.

Roll a ball out of paper or aluminum foil.  Twist a pipe cleaner around the ball.  This will form your head and your hands.

Take two pieces of a pipe cleaner and twist them together.

This will form the body and legs.

Now twist the arms around the body starting with the right one then left one.  This way you will attach both pieces together.

Use the clay to make feet and place the “sculpture” on it.

Now I decide to wrap my person the hard way also known as the frugal way by wrapping it in small pieces.

My daughter decided to wrap it in big pieces which was faster and easier.

Mine made some cool photos though.

Here is my gentelmen tall and skinny.

and here is a cute girl made by my daughter.

She has long hair and a skirt on.

she also has a dog, how cool.

Voila, here they are.

Just a little bit of tweeking, like adding a leash.

The dog and his master.

Now the final product:  A woman walking a dog meets a man and says hello. Of course you can stage these people as you wish.