Johannes Itten

Johannes Itten was a Swiss expressionist

painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist
associated with the Bauhaus. He was born
in Wachseldorn, Switzerland on 11
November 1888 and died on 25 March 1967
in Zurich, Switzerland. He started his early
career in primary school education but he
gave it up to study fine art briefly at the
École des Beaux Arts in Geneva.

Professor Johannes Itten created a colour sphere in 7 light values and 12 tones in
1921, represented by this 12-pointed star, as a tool for students at the Bauhaus. In 1926 he founded his
own modern art school
  in Berlin.. In 1937,
In October 1919, Itten was appointed as one of the first
masters at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar by Itten’s work was
Walter Gropius. Until 1922–1923, he was both director
of the preliminary course which he had developed
displayed at the
independently for the introductory semester and master
In 1938, he became the director of exhibition Entartete
of form of all the workshops except for the ceramic,
bookbinding and printing workshops. Itten made a
the Kunstgewerbeschule (school of
applied arts) and the
Kunst (degenerate art)
significant contribution to the Bauhaus by promoting the
Mazdaznan cult, which spans religions and
Kunstgewerbemuseum (museum of in Munich.
applied arts) in Zurich.
philosophies. After internal differences with Walter
 
Gropius, Itten left the Bauhaus in March 1923
 
 Although Itten painted this color abstraction prior to his
arrival at the Bauhaus, it includes many of the
fundamental principles that would be central to his
teaching there. His use of geometric shapes, including the
dominant spiral and repeated circles and rectangles, along
with his exploration of the color spectrum preview his later
interests.

Tower of Fire (1920)

The tower rises around a central core, with repeating
projections of yellow, blue, and red leaded glass. The
stacked cubes were intended to be formed from three
different materials: the lowest four from clay or stone (to
connect to life on earth); the middle four were to be metal
forms that concealed bells (Itten's notes do not elaborate
on this meaning); the upper four cubes were to symbolize
the four essential elements of earth, water, air, and fire.
The number twelve had significance from Itten's own color
theories, as well as contemporary tonal experiments in
music and both the traditional and zodialogical calendars.