Itten, Johannes

Itten, Johannes (1888–1967). Swiss painter, designer, writer on art, and teacher, born at Südern-Linden. He trained as a primary school teacher but decided to become a painter and studied under Hölzel in Stuttgart, 1913–16. In 1916 he opened his own school of art in Vienna, then from 1919 to 1923 he taught at the Bauhaus, where he was in charge of the ‘preliminary course', obligatory for all students. In 1923 he left the Bauhaus and opened another school of his own in Berlin, then from 1932 to 1938 he taught at the Krefeld School of Textile Design. In 1938 he settled in Zurich, where he held four posts concurrently—as director of the School of Arts and Crafts, the Museum of Arts and Crafts, the Rietberg Museum, and the School of Textile Design. He retired in 1961.

Itten's work as a painter consisted mainly of geometrical abstractions, exemplifying his researches into colour. However, he is best remembered as a teacher, especially for his preliminary course at the Bauhaus, which had a great influence on instruction in other art schools. He emphasized the importance of knowledge of materials, but also encouraged his pupils to develop their imaginations through, for example, automatic writing (see AUTOMATISM). His mystical ideas were opposed to the technological outlook of Gropius (their quarrels caused Itten's departure from the Bauhaus) and he had a reputation as a crank (he followed an obscure faith called Mazdazhan, shaved his head, and wore a long robe), but he influenced many of his students. Frank Whitford (Bauhaus, 1984) describes him as ‘a man of strange beliefs, a teacher of unconventional brilliance and a perplexing mixture of saint and charlatan'. Itten wrote several books on the theory of art, the best known of which is probably Kunst der Farbe, published in 1961 and in the same year translated into English as The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color.