JOHANNES ITTEN

 

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

Johannes Itten (1888-1967) was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer, colour theorist, writer and teacher with Weimar Bauhaus. He first studied at Geneva’s École des Beaux-Arts in 1909, but returned to Bern-Hofwil Teachers’ Academy. In 1912, he came to Geneva to study with abstract painter Eugène Gilliard.

Itten taught fundamentals of material qualities, composition, and colour at the Bauhaus (from 1919 to 1922). He wrote a book ‘The Art of Colour’(1961). He believed ‘Colours must have a mystical capacity for spiritual expression, without being tied to objects’.

Itten adopted a series of basic geometric shapes (the line, the plane, the circle, the spiral), along with the exploration of the colour contrasts. His artworks cover a wide range of styles and experiments in composition. 

 

 

 

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