Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Johannes Itten (11 November 1888 – 25 March 1967) was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer,
teacher, writer and theorist associated with the Bauhaus (Staatliches Bauhaus) school. Together with
German-American painter Lyonel Feininger and German sculptor Gerhard Marcks, under the
direction of German architect Walter Gropius, Itten was part of the core of the Weimar Bauhaus.
From 1919 to 1922, Itten taught at the Bauhaus, developing the innovative "preliminary
course"[3] which was to teach students the basics of material characteristics, composition, and color.
"Itten theorized seven types of color contrast and devised exercises to teach them. His color
contrasts include[d] (1) contrast by hue, (2) contrast by value, (3) contrast by temperature, (4)
contrast by complements (neutralization), (5) simultaneous contrast (from Chevreuil), (6) contrast
by saturation (mixtures with gray), and (7) contrast by extension (from Goethe)."[4]
In 1919 he invited Gertrud Grunow, to teach a course on the "theory of harmony" at the Bauhaus.
This involved using music and relaxation techniques with the aim of improving the students'
creativity.[5]
In 1920 Itten invited Paul Klee and Georg Muche to join him at the Bauhaus.[6] He published a
book, The Art of Color, which describes his ideas as a furthering of Adolf Hölzel's color wheel. Itten's
so called "color sphere" went on to include 12 colors.
In 1924, Itten established the Ontos Weaving Workshops [7] near Zurich, with the help of Bauhaus
weaver Gunta Stölzl.
Itten was a follower of Mazdaznan, a fire cult originating in the United States that was largely derived
from Zoroastrianism. He observed a strict vegetarian diet and practiced meditation as a means to
develop inner understanding and intuition, which was for him the principal source of artistic
inspiration and practice.[2] Itten's mysticism and the reverence in which he was held by a group of the
students, some of whom converted to Mazdaznan (e.g. Georg Muche), created conflict with Walter
Gropius who wanted to move the school in a direction that embraced mass production rather than
solely individual artistic expression. The rift led to Itten's resignation from the Bauhaus and his
prompt replacement by László Moholy-Nagy in 1923.[8][9] From 1926 to 1934 he had a small art and
architecture school in Berlin, in which Ernst Neufert, the former chief-architect of Walter Gropius at
the Bauhaus, taught as well from 1932 to 1934.
Itten's works exploring the use and composition of color resemble the square op art canvases of
artists such as Josef Albers, Max Bill and Bridget Riley, and the expressionist works of Wassily
Kandinsky.
1949–1956 Director of the Museum Rietberg, Zürich, a museum for non-European art
1955 colour courses at the HfG Ulm (Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm)
Influence
Itten's work on color is also said to be an inspiration for seasonal color analysis. Itten had been the
first to associate color palettes with four types of people, and had designated those types with the
names of seasons. His studies of color palettes and color interaction directly influenced the Op Art
movement and other color abstraction base movements. Shortly after his death, his designations
gained popularity in the cosmetics industry with the publication of Color Me A Season.
Cosmetologists today continue to use seasonal color analysis, a tribute to the early work by Itten. [4]