Painting Up Close and From Afar (Ages 7–12)

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw invites you to creative family workshops. Together, we’ll explore the fascinating world of large-scale art and create our own abstract works.

In the first part of the event, we’ll visit the exhibition “Julie Mehretu. Kairos / Spiritual Variations”.

There, we’ll ponder what a painting actually is. We’ll see if artists always use brushes, or if they know other, unusual ways to apply paint to the canvas.

 

We’ll get very close to the artworks and look at them from a distance. We’ll search for hidden traces of various tools. We’ll also examine whether painting always has to depict something we know and recognize at first glance. We’ll find out what we notice in a painting after a quick glance, and what we discover when we look at it for a longer time. In this way, step by step, we’ll explain to ourselves what “abstract painting” really means.

While still in the exhibition halls, we’ll design our own compositions and place them among the artist’s original works. We’ll think about the ideal arrangement of elements. Then we’ll head to the education room to take matters into our own hands!

In the second part of the session, we’ll paint one big, collaborative painting. Julie Mehretu herself often works in a team, so we’ll also see how much fun creating as a group can be. We’ll talk about why we like working together and whether painting can truly be a team effort. Finally, we’ll try to divide our big masterpiece so that everyone can take a piece of our collaborative work home as a souvenir.

Important: We’ll be using acrylic paints during the workshop. It’s a good idea to bring a change of clothes—ones that can get dirty!