Johannes Itten

From SourceryForge

Johannes Itten (November 11, 1888 - May 27, 1967) was a Swiss painter, designer teacher, writer and theorist associated with the Bauhaus school, an art college at Berlin that promoted the fusion of modern art and design. He developed a colour theory that was meant to be studied and used by artists. While parts of it are outdated in our modern understanding of the physics of colour, his theories remain useful in the contest of art and are still widely studied. Interestingly he followed a non-traditional spiritual path, Mazdaznan, which required courage and standfast belief in his time.

1 Life and Work
2 Itten's spirituality
3 seasonal colour analysis
4 His art
5 Books
6 References
7 External links

Life and Work

Born in Südern-Linden, Switzerland, from 1904 to 1908 he studied as an elementary school teacher. Beginning in 1908 he taught using methods developed by Friedrich Froebel and was exposed to the ideas of psychoanalysis. Friedrich Froebel was the inventor of kindergarden, and a pioneer of playful teaching methods for young children. He later enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva but then returned to Berne, after being unimpressed with the educators there.

He was taught by Eugène Gilliard, an abstract painter.

1913 He enrolled at the art academy Stuttgard, Germany, and learned there from Adolf Hölzel, a modernist painter.

1916 first exhibition by himself at gallery Der Sturm, and also opened his own art school at Vienna, Austria.

From 1919-1922, Itten taught at the Bauhaus, developing the innovative preliminary course which was to teach students the basics of material characteristics, composition, and colour. He also published a book - The Art of Color- which describes these ideas as a furthering of Adolf Hölzel's colour wheel. Itten's so called "color sphere" went on to include 12 colours. This book and the theories therein are still a mainstay of art education. He was greatly admired by his students.

Itten's mysticism and hold on the students increasingly alienated him from the other leading figures of the Bauhaus, particularly Walter Gropius and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who were moving the school in a direction that embraced mass production rather than individual artistic expression and craftsmanship. The rift led to Itten's forced resignation from the Bauhaus.

After that, he held several positions at art school, museums and the like but never really settled down for more than a few years. 1955 he retired and wrote more books.

Itten's spirituality

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.

seasonal colour analysis

Itten's work on color is also said to be an inspiration for seasonal color analysis, Itten having been the first to associate color pallates with four types of people and designating those types with the names of seasons. 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.

Seasonal colour analysis determines the clothing and makeup colours a person should wear by observing both their skin/hair/eye colour and their character, deviding people in four seasonal types. This is sometimes, but not always combined with esoterical or pseudo-psychological predictions about their character and behaviour and advice on living properly.

His art

Itten's works exploring the use and composition of colour resemble the square op-art canvases of artists such as Josef Albers, Max Bill and Bridget Riley, and the expressionist works of Wassily Kandinsky.

In fact, his art is for the most part forgotten today, or just regarded as illustration for his books and other teaching materials. But his influence as a teacher and theoretical thinker remains great.