Historical Artists
"Art in schools shouldn’t be sidelined… it should be right there, right up in the front because, I think art teaches you to deal with the world around you. It is the oxygen that makes all the other subjects breathe"
Alan Parker, filmmaker (tate.org.uk)
Enhance your learner's art and design knowledge
Please check the content of all attached links for suitability before showing to learners
Ogwyn Davies
1925 - 2015
Ogwyn Davies was a Welsh artist, born in Trebanos in the Swansea Valley. He studied at the Swansea School of Art, before living and working in Tregaron, Ceredigion. His art combines the traditional welsh landscape and buildings with the words of Welsh poems and songs. A great link with Literacy.
Ogwyn Davies
Farmer, Blaen Nantmor by Kyffin Williams,
Kyffin Williams
1918-2006
Sir John Kyffin Williams, OBE, RA was a Welsh landscape painter who lived at Pwllfanogl, Llanfairpwll, on the Island of Anglesey. Williams is widely regarded as the defining artist of Wales during the 20th century.He uses dark colours and bold paint strokes to describe the rugged landscape and figures of Wales.
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Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh 1853-1890
Vincent Van Gogh was a dutch artist who lived over 100 years ago. You can use his work to link in with mark making and colour mixing. His themes are mixed and include: landscape, flowers, interiors and portraits. The link below is to the Van Gogh Museum site, this will show you a wide variety of his painted work and drawings.
Van Gogh 'landscape with houses'
Gwen John 'Cat'
Gwen John
1876-1939
Gwendolen Mary John was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. Her paintings, mainly portraits of female sitters and cats are painted in a range of similar tones. She painted in a male dominated art world and was overshadowed during her lifetime by her brother Augustus John and her lover Auguste Rodin, her reputation has grown steadily since her death.
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Ernest Zobole
1927 - 1999
Ernest Zobole was a Welsh painter and art teacher. Born to Italian immigrants, Zobole's paintings, originally oil on canvas, later switching to oil on board, reflected the industrial setting of the Rhondda Valleys using bright colours and shapes to describe this industrial landscape
Ernest Zobole
Peter Prendergast 'Bethesda Quarry '
Peter Predergast
1946-2007
Painter and teacher, born in Abertridwr, Glamorgan, son of a miner. He attended Cardiff College of Art, 1962–4, Slade School of Fine Art, 1964–7
His bold use of black outlines and colourful representation of the Quarry ad rugged landscape around Bethesda make him a great artist to use for charcoal and ink drawings.
Goff Danter
1949 - 2023
Passionate about art, He used fond memories of his childhood & surroundings to influence his paintings of fairgrounds, welsh landscapes, industry and horse racing. A great use of colour and paint marks makes him an ideal artist to explore childhood memories of places and events. He also painted energetic fairground images.
Goff Danter ' Late again'
Kandinsky 'Composition VIII'
Wassily Kandinsky
Kandinsky 1866–1944
A Russian painter and colour theorist, Kandinsky would be a great artist to look at when learning about colour mixing. His work is abstract and he uses a lot of geometric shapes so there are great links in with numeracy too. Kandinsky suffered from a condition known as Synesthesia which enabled him to see shapes and colours when he listened to music. There is a really good link below to 'Google- Play a Kandinsky'
which illustrates what he would have seen.
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas 1834-1917
French artist Degas was most famous for his paintings of dancers and horses. He would sit side stage and watch rehearsals while sketching the dancers, his drawings are excellent examples of using tone and also demonstrate a sketching technique that does not always have to be perfect.
Degas 'study from 3 dancers'
Picasso 'Vase aux chèvres'
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso 1881 - 1973
Picasso was an extremely important French artist. He was best known for his paintings, many of which were abstract. In his 60's he became interested in ceramics and his simple style of creating an image would be great to use with learners if they wanted to decorate their very own clay bowls and tiles.
Lucien Freud
Lucien Freud
1922-2011
Lucien Freud was a British painter who is best known for his portraits and self portraits. His distinct style makes the eyes of the portrait appear larger than they should be. Freud is a great artist to use when looking at drawing a self portrait, the line detail and use of texture in his drawings is detailed and yet easy to replicate. The link below will give you some different examples of his drawings. Take care when showing learners his work from other sites as he painted many nude portraits too.
