FIS Upper School Visual Arts Department

Here you can see samples of artworks our students are producing from grades 6 to 12. Just select a gallery level below for a slide show of student work.

Slide shows of student work you can view:

Taking Pride in Our Work!

FIS students have many opportunities to create and appreciate art. All Grade 6 to 8 students receive 100 minutes of art instruction every 8 days, and Grade 9 students who opt for Visual Arts as an elective recieve 150 minutes per cycle. Grade 10 Foundations Arts students have 300 minutes of art time per cycle and IB Diploma level Art students have up to 350 minutes per cycle. In any given week, over 500 students are moving through the three Upper School art studios, painting, sculpting, printing and drawing. For a look at the curriculum for each of the grade levels, click here FIS Visual Arts Curriculum.

In addition to their studio practice, most of the Upper School grade levels have organized trips to art museums and institutions where they learn about art and art history. The grade 6 students have the opportunity every first term to sketch animals in the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt. They sketch from the exhibits and study the physiology of animals and its relationship with their life and how it might affect their drawings. Seventh graders are taken every third term to the legendary Kroeller-Mueller museum in the Netherlands to interact with Modernist art and walk through the spectacular sculpture gardens there. The grade 9 and 10 students have sketching as part of their first term class trips to Salzburg and Dortmund and the grade 11 students have tours every first term of the Prince-Archbishop's palace and the amazing Tiepolo frescoes in Würzburg, guided by fellow students in the IB Diploma art program. Finally, the IB students in grades 11 and 12 are treated to alternating biennial visits every first term to the Städel Museum and the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt where they are brought face to face with some of the worlds most famous personalities in art from the medieval period to the present day. In all of these instances, the students are required to do more than just look at the art around them. They are asked to reflect upon and (in some cases) create art in response to what they see in these exhibitions. This is part of the larger FIS philosophy of eductaing the whole child and encouraging our young thinkers to recognize, understand and respond to the issues and aesthetics they perceive in the world around them.

Grade 10 Conte Still Life Drawings 2008

Every year the Grade 10 Foundations Art students spend six weeks devoted to observational drawing of a particularly challenging kind. Using an assortment of conte crayon pastels, they must carfeully draw a variety of highly reflective musical instruments lit by a single, high-intensity light source. The diffiuclty of the medium (conte is always challenging) and the twisted, curved and highly polished metal surfaces of the objects makes this one of the most ambitous projects of their Grade 10 year in Visual Arts. The results are always fascinating and this year's group of young artists rose to the challenge beautifully! Click here for a slide show of this year's completed drawings.

Grade 9 Color Wheels 2008 are Here!

Part of the Grade 9 curriculum in Visual Arts is learning to mix complex shades, tints and tones of the spectrum and demonstrating a growing mastery of paint control by arranging them in the order of the color wheel. To make the task more individualized and creative, students are encouraged to adapt a unique shape to their color wheel, which ofetn makes for some surprisingly beautiful and though-provoking images. For a slide show of 35 sample color wheels from this year, please click here.

Grade 10 Abstractions 2007-8 are here!

Daylight in November and December in Germany gradually gives way to longer nights and darker weather.   But the gradual shadowing of the days in winter at FIS parallels a rather enlightening process that occurs in the new art studios of the Upper School, where 33 grade ten students in Ms Murray's and Mr Trebel's classes have been developing their understanding of the role of abstraction in art. Abstraction - the degree to which a representation intentionally fails to reflect and accurate or mimetic portrayal of its subject - is a hallmark of art throughout the twentieth century and a staple of modernism. One of the fundamental skills taught in the Foundations Art course at FIS involves understanding abstraction as a process , as a deliberate and highly refined system of image development. This equips our students to handle more complicated abstract work in the IB Diploma level program and empowers them in their attempts to understand and appreciate the larger body of abstract images in the visual world around them. The results of this intense investigation now grace the walls of our student art gallery on the top floor of the new Arts & Sciences Center (room 349) and are on view until mid-February.  

These acrylic paintings, each 50 x 70 cm, represent three months of painstaking analysis and composition work on the part of our young artists. Each begins with detailed, highly realistic pencil sketches of common, everyday objects (a chair, a bottle, etc) and evolves into a patchwork of varying values from white to grey to black. Throughout this process of development, each artist must maintain a carefully selected composition and center of interest. At the end of the project, when the final work emerges in acrylic paint, the same focal point must be visible. It is a demanding process and instills in our students a realization that abstraction is not as easy at it may look and, more often than not, involves more thought, planning and discipline than similar efforts in realistic representation. Click here for Slide show.

For a slide show of pervious Abstractions, please click here.

Digital Video as Art at FIS

Students in the Visual Arts program at FIS have many opportunites to make use of digital technology. Many have chosen to make use of digital video and photography to complete all or part of their IB art portfolio. Several students in recent years have achieved high scores on their exams with video as their only medium of expression. Students are encouraged to broaden their horizons, take on challenging media and immerse themselves in what interests them most. For many, digital video helps them achieve these goals in ways more traditional media cannot.

Jeremiah, a video artwork created by IB student Dorian Weiss, March 2008. Dorian uses video as a means of exploring the Jungian notion of the Dark Self.

1ne is 2wo is a follow-up work to Jeremiah by Dorian Weiss, made in June 2008. It continues his exploration of the theme of confronting the darker nature of the self. Dorian uses some creative camera angles, high contrast and some sophisticated Adobe AfterEffects techniques to bring intensity and tension to his film.

Hectic is conceptual art video produced and directed by 2007 Diploma graduate Stella Falderbaum. Stella's videos are conceptual pieces, based upon an abstact theme, such as Freedom, Peace or, in this case, a hectic, urban existence. Her use of staccato imagery, quick clips and repetitiveness, combined with a driving electronic beat, underscores the nature of the stressful city life with which many of us are all to familiar.