Johannes Itten

 

Biography

Johannes Itten was born at Südern-Linden in Switzerland on 11 November 1888. He was the son of a teacher at the teacher-training institute in Bern. He went to the academy in Geneva to follow lessons, but he didn’t like the way of teaching and returned to Bern. There he was taught by the abstract painter Eugène Gilliard. Between 1919 and 1922 gave Johannes Itten taught at the Bauhaus. Later he published the book "Art and colour", that describes his ideas about composition and colour, based on the colour circle of Adolf Hozel. The starting point in this study was the colour wheel of Itten with twelve colours. In 1925 he founded his own school in Berlin; Johannes Ittenschule. In 1938 he left Germany for Amsterdam. After several years he returned to Switzerland, where he became director of the art school in Zurich. In this city he founded the Rietbergmuseum of Asian art. Johannes Itten died in May 1967 in Zurich.

The colour wheel of Itten

Ittens colour wheel is based on the subtractive colour system (meaning with paint and light that falls on the paint). Itten has as primary colours red, yellow and blue. The secondary colours are orange, green and violet. The tertiary colours are created by mixing a primary and a secondary colour. In later years it became clear that the primary colours of Itten were not the actual primary colours, but they resembled them very close.

Red, for example, is not a real primary colour, but the pink, purplish quinacridone is. So the result of mixing red and blue isn’t the right purple. Nevertheless are the subjective colour experiences who Itten presents in his book (for example the seven colour contrasts) still recognized as a meaningful description for students.

 

Other work of Itten

Here are some examples of his work.

 

 

 

Die Begegnung                                                                           Untitled
                                                                                            1918
1916                                                                                    20.5x15.5 cm
105x80 cm                                                                         

 

 

 

 

Flames
1961
12.5x19 cm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kunst der farbe

 

 

 

 

Our own colourmixing sheet 

At school we had to make a colourmixing sheet. For the outlines we had to mix paint. We only could use the primary colours red, yellow and blue. For the sun we had to use colour pencils. One half of the sun is in 'hot' colours red, orange and yellow and the other half of the sun is in 'cold' colours, black, blue, green and purple. I used the purple in the hot and the cold side, because if you use purple in the hot side, it 's a warm colour and in the cold side it's a cold colour. The flowers are in complimantary colours. We were free to chose which material we wanted to use. I used wax crayons, because these colours can flow nicely into each other. My mark is a 7.5 and I'm very happy with that. I think I did it very well, but if I could change it, I would change the paint. That's because the orange is almost red and the colours are a bit messy.