Free famous artists worksheets

How to use these worksheets in class

• One artist a week. Project two or three of the artist’s real paintings on the board (they are easy to find online and the older ones are out of copyright), read the passage together, and let students answer the questions alone. Keep the drawing task for the art lesson later in the week so it has proper time and materials.
• Pair the reading with a technique. Van Gogh’s sheet works best with oil pastels or thick tempera; Monet’s with cotton buds and watercolour, no pencil outline allowed; Picasso’s with a ruler and colored pencils; Kahlo’s with a mirror per table; Leonardo’s with a fine black pen and a real mirror to check the backwards writing.
• Compare two artists. After Monet and Van Gogh, ask which painter cared more about light and which about feeling. After Picasso and Leonardo, ask which one wanted his pictures to look real. The comparisons are where the vocabulary sticks.
• Use the match-up as the assessment. The quiz introduces three artists not covered by the fact files (Georgia O’Keeffe, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky) so that fast finishers have something to look up.
• Home use. Each fact file is self-contained, so one sheet plus a search for the artist’s name on a tablet is a complete 30-minute activity.

Answer key

Every practice sheet carries its own answer key on page 2 of the PDF. The keys are repeated here for quick marking.

• Vincent van Gogh: Meet the artist: 1. The Netherlands. 2. 27 years old; he painted for about ten years. 3. He used bright colors and thick paint with swirling brushstrokes (visible marks). 4. Sunflowers and The Starry Night. 5. His brother Theo. Your turn: Drawing task; no single answer.
• Leonardo da Vinci: Meet the artist: 1. In Vinci, Italy, in 1452. 2. A time when art and science were changing quickly. 3. Inventor, scientist and engineer. 4. He wrote backwards, in mirror writing. 5. Because he filled thousands of notebook pages with drawings and notes. Your turn: Drawing task; no single answer.
• Frida Kahlo: Meet the artist: 1. She was badly hurt in a bus accident and spent months in bed. 2. They fixed a mirror above her bed and gave her paints. 3. A picture an artist makes of themselves; 55. 4. Any three of: bright colors, flowers in her hair, monkeys, parrots, symbols from Mexican history and culture. 5. Her paints, her clothes and her garden (it is a museum). Your turn: Drawing task; no single answer.
• Pablo Picasso: Meet the artist: 1. Málaga, Spain; his father was an art teacher. 2. A few years when Picasso painted sad pictures mostly in shades of blue. 3. Picasso and Georges Braque; they break people and objects into flat shapes and show them from several sides at once. 4. The bombing of a Spanish town during a war; black, white and gray. 5. About 50,000. Your turn: Drawing task; no single answer.
• Claude Monet: Meet the artist: 1. To catch the way light and weather change from minute to minute. 2. From Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise, after a critic made fun of the title. 3. To show how the colors changed at different times of day. 4. Any two of: haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, water lilies. 5. A huge garden with a pond and a Japanese bridge; he painted the water lilies. Your turn: Drawing task; no single answer.
• Famous artists match-up: Part 1: where were they from?: Vincent van Gogh = the Netherlands; Leonardo da Vinci = Italy; Frida Kahlo = Mexico; Pablo Picasso = Spain; Claude Monet = France; Georgia O’Keeffe = the United States; Wassily Kandinsky = Russia Part 2: who made it?: The Starry Night = Vincent van Gogh; Mona Lisa = Leonardo da Vinci; Guernica = Pablo Picasso; Water Lilies = Claude Monet; Self-Portrait with Monkeys = Frida Kahlo; The Snail (paper cut-out) = Henri Matisse; Giant close-up flower paintings = Georgia O’Keeffe Part 3: which style?: Impressionism: dabs of color that catch light = Claude Monet; Cubism: flat shapes seen from many sides = Pablo Picasso; Post-Impressionism: thick swirling strokes = Vincent van Gogh; Renaissance: lifelike figures, study of nature = Leonardo da Vinci; Abstract art: no recognizable objects = Wassily Kandinsky Part 4: quick answers: 1. Frida Kahlo. 2. Any reasoned answer.

Common misconceptions

• "Old paintings are all realistic." Leonardo’s are; Van Gogh’s and Monet’s, painted four centuries later, are not trying to be. The fact files put dates in every passage so students can build a timeline.
• "Cubism means drawing cubes." It means showing several viewpoints at once with flat shapes. The drawing task (nose from the side, eyes from the front) makes the idea concrete.
• "Famous artists were famous in their lifetime." Van Gogh sold very little; the passage says so, and it is worth a class discussion about why.