Farbenkugel (Color sphere) (detail), Philipp Otto Runge, 1810. He theorized these associations as general artistic principles.įig. His book On the Spiritual in Art established distinct emotional and spiritual associations between specific colors and forms.

Vassily Kandinsky arrived at the Bauhaus already a renowned expert on color theory. Paul Klee developed a theory of color that began with the line and led, through mutations in direction and acceleration, toward the color wheel. Itten’s color star was just one among many variations on the standard color wheel that Bauhaus masters and students developed through pedagogical exchange. Itten explained how the star could be used to study color contrasts: “Reading outward, we have the zones of tints, the zone of the pure hues, and the two zones of shades, with black at the extreme points of the star.” 2 Each meridian line dissects the center of the circles to hit its polar opposite in space, while an “equatorial zone” displays the twelve pure colors from a classic twelve-hue color wheel. It featured six concentric circles, representing the surface of Runge’s sphere, with twelve “meridians” radiating from their circumference. Itten identified seven fundamental categories of contrast: hue, light-dark, cold-warm, complementary, analogous, saturation, and extension. From Bruno Adler, ed., Utopia: Dokumente der Wirklichkeit I/II (Weimar, 1921), foldout from inside cover. Farbenkugel in 7 Lichtstufen und 12 Tönen (Color sphere in 7 light values and 12 tones), Johannes Itten, 1921. These poles, represented by the white center of the star and its black tips, contained between them endless possibilities for the study of contrasting color effects.įig.

28) unfolds and flattens Runge’s sphere in order to display its dark-light polarities on a single plane. Created in 1921, Itten’s color star (fig. 29) formed the basis of color instruction in the Preliminary Course. Johannes Itten’s reinterpretation of romantic painter Philipp Otto Runge’s color sphere ( Farbenkugel) (fig. The study of color at the Bauhaus was shaped by a diverse body of previously developed artistic, psychological, and scientific theories of color, tested and innovated through practical exercises. Each individual color is a universe in itself. Courtesy the Itten Estate, Zurichįig-16.png The kingdom of colors has within it multidimensional possibilities only partly to be reduced to simple order. Johannes Itten in Herrliberg, Germany, photographer unknown, 1923.

Albers colour theory