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Find out who is René Magritte with this art homework guide, includes facts for kids

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What is he most famous for?

Born in London in 1889, he is most famous for his landscape paintings, which look mysterious and sometimes slightly spooky.

The features in his landscapes often seem to be more than just a tree or a hill. They have characteristics that make them look like animals, people, or other strange creatures. When he was young Paul Nash was fascinated by a group of tall elm trees that grew at the end of his garden. These trees were very old and he thought they looked as if they were

'Hurrying along stooping and undulating like a queue of urgent females with fantastic hats'.

Do you ever look at things in the landscape like gnarled tree trunks or clouds and think they look like animals, people or monsters?

He collaged photographs of sticks and other bits of nature. You could have a go at making your own eerie Paul Nash inspired landscape by sticking photos of twigs, leaves and other natural objects with funny shapes to a drawing or photograph of a landscape.

Where did his ideas and style come from?

There were two big things that influenced Paul Nash: abstract art and surrealism.

Abstract art is art that doesn't try to show accurately how something looks. Artists change how things look to create a particular feeling or emotion. Sometimes they do this by using unexpected colours, shapes or messy brush marks or by changing the perspective and adding objects that look odd.

The ideas of the surrealists also influenced Paul Nash's style. The surrealists were a group of artists who, in the 1920s began to make art and creative writing inspired by thoughts that are hidden deep in our brains - that we might not even know we have!

They were interested in the ideas of a famous psychologist called Sigmund Freud. A psychologist is someone who investigates people's minds and tries to understand how they think. Freud called these hidden thoughts 'the subconscious'. Sometimes these hidden thoughts appear in our dreams.

Do you think his pictures looks like a real scene? What words would you use to describe them? How has Paul Nash made the landscapes look a bit strange?

Anything else we need to know?

During both the First and Second World Wars Paul Nash was an official war artist. A war artist is someone paid by the government to paint or draw events that were happening in the war.

Paul Nash's paintings didn't just document the war in a straightforward way. In this painting, the huge red watery sunset adds a powerful feeling of sadness to this scene of a crashed plane.

The picture below shows one of Paul Nash's most famous paintings. It was painted during the Second World War. It looks a bit like the sea with spiky silvery waves doesn't it? He called the painting Totes Meer (which is German for Dead Sea). Can you work out what is piled up in this graveyard? Paul Nash called them 'enchanting monsters'.

Look closely, can you see wings and wheels? The 'waves' or 'monsters' are in fact lots of crashed and broken aeroplanes.

Look even more closely and you might see a ghostly white bird flying in the sky...

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Who is Paul Nash? - Who Are They? | Tate Kids

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Born in London in 1889, he is most famous for his landscape paintings, which look mysterious and sometimes slightly spooky. The features in his landscapes often seem to be more than just a tree or a hill. They have characteristics that make them look like animals, people, or other strange creatures.

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Salvador Dalí made paintings, sculptures and films about the dreams he had. He painted melting clocks and floating eyes, clouds that look like faces and rocks that look like bodies.

Sounds weird right? Think about what your paintings would look like if you painted your dreams? I bet they would be pretty weird too!

Dalí was involved with surrealism. This was an art movement where painters made dream-like scenes and showed situations that would be bizarre or impossible in real life. Look at this painting above - does the lake look like a fish to you?

This sculpture above is by another famous surrealist artist called René Magritte. I wonder why he has painted a head full of clouds?

Surrealist artists were influenced by a famous psychoanalyst called Sigmund Freud. A psychoanalyst is a doctor who studies the human mind and tries to understand it. Freud believed our mind was divided into two parts: the conscious part and the unconscious part. The conscious mind is what we use to make decisions every day, like whether we walk or ride a bike to school. The unconscious mind is where our memories are stored. Most of the time we are not aware of our unconscious mind, but sometimes the memories stored there get mixed up in our dreams and this is what Dalí tried to paint.

Dalí was born in 1904 in Figueres, Spain which is near the Pyrenees Mountains. Surrounded by this landscape as he was growing up, Dalí often included the scenery he saw as a boy in his paintings.

Look at the painting above. Can you see the Spanish landscape in the background? The hand holding the egg mirrors the man sitting in the water. There are a lot of odd things going on in the background that don't seem to be connected. What else can you see?

Salvador Dalí was a very eccentric man. Here is a picture of him

You can always recognise him because he has a funny moustache. He liked to dress in crazy clothes and have long hair which people found very shocking at the time.

Dalí was even expelled from art school just before his final exams because he said that none of the teachers were qualified to examine him. Cheeky!

Salvador Dalí went to Paris after leaving art school, which was where he met the surrealists. The surrealists appealed to his wild sense of humour, they invented surrealist games and enjoyed putting different objects together to make something playful and disturbing at the same time. Here is Dalí's version of a surrealist sculpture. It is called Lobster Telephone. You couldn't call anything on that!

What two objects would you put together to create a surreal sculpture?

In 1936 the Spanish Civil War broke out and Dalí was greatly affected by it. This is a painting Dalí made about the war.

The background is mainly brown, yellow and black, representing the Spanish landscape. The strange forms in the foreground represent a man and a woman. It's pretty gross, but they are eating bits of each other's flesh with a knife, a fork and a spoon. Dalí uses this shocking idea to say something very powerful and important. He is saying that by fighting, the Spanish people are destroying their country and each other.

When Dalí was in Paris he also made a film with the director Luis Buñuel called Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog). It was the first surrealist film and had no plot, just a series of scenes that only slightly link together. Later, Dalí went to Hollywood and worked on other films with famous directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney.

Dalí liked to use lots of different materials to make art, including paint, sculpture and film. He even designed furniture, jewels and scenery for theatre production. He was a man of many talents and he is still seen as a great artist who influences many artists today!

What do you think of Dalí's artwork? Is it funny, weird...scary?

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Salvador Dalí made paintings, sculptures and films about the dreams he had. He painted melting clocks and floating eyes, clouds that look like faces and rocks that look like bodies. Sounds weird right? Think about what your paintings would look like if you painted your dreams? I bet they would be pretty weird too!

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START HERE, Surrealism

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Now you know a little more about surrealism, what do you think?

Which surrealist artist is your favourite?

What unexpected things would you put together? How about drawing a tree wearing a scarf or a squirrel with a monocle?!

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What is Surrealism? Find out with this art film, includes homework help and facts for kids about Salvador Dali, Joan Miro and Dorothea Tanning.