Johannes Itten

Works in the MOMA collection

Before joining the Bauhaus Itten headed his own art school in Vienna. At the Bauhaus he designed an innovative introductory course: he let students explore form, color, rhythm and contrast. Itten’s principles were of tremendous influence not only on art education, but also on Kandinsky and Klee.

Feeling blue? Seeing red? Swiss color theorist Johannes Itten (1888-1967) would understand. He helped explain what colors do and how they do it. He assigned colors qualities like “warm” and “cool” to describe how they react with each other and how they affect us physically and psychologically. He made Pantone and Color Me Beautiful possible.

LACMA collections

Group of Houses in Spring

Artists and designers use color theory to understand the effects of mixing colors. Although the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci contain writings on color theory, most color theorists point to Isaac Newton as the developer of color theory. Swiss artist Johannes Itten expanded upon the work of Newton and others to develop his theory of color. Itten’s theory takes into account not only a color’s contrasting properties but also its emotional ones. His work was first developed at the Bauhaus. Artists and designers continue to refer to and use his work to this day…