How to Teach 3rd Grade Visual Arts with Magnificent Mondrian

If you are familiar with Piet Mondrian, then you know that he is famous for his abstract paintings. Interesting fact though… Mondrian actually started painting realistic scenes. In this post, I share how my 3rd grade class recreated their own versions of his Compositions with Yellow, Blue, and Red.

Making Connections

With a lesson plan like this, it’s always ideal to help students make connections between the artist you are teaching them about and real life. In this case, you have a great opportunity to teach students what makes up abstract art and how these characteristics can be seen all around them.

Mondrian had a unique way he approached his art, which is also something that can be used to teach your students. For starters, Mondrian was known to mix his own colors and often used primary colors (which is what we use in this project). You can have your students do an extra fun lesson of mixing primary colors and seeing what they come up with.

There are also vocabulary words that can be taught. For example composition. Explain to your students that composition is the arrangement of shapes and images in a picture. They will use this when creating their own.

Magnificent Mondrian Art Project

After studying the works of Piet Mondrian, I led my students in creating their own version of Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red. First, they cut shapes out of colored construction paper and arranged them on white paper. Once they were positioned the way they wanted, they glued them down.

Lastly, they used popsicle sticks to stamp black tempera lines on top.

If you are doing this project with an older class, you can have them try to draw their own black lines and choose a few squares to paint red, blue, and yellow.

I was excited to see how these turned out. This is a great way to allow your students to show their creativity.