Johannes
Itten

Johannes Itten (it. Johannes Itten; 11 November 1888, Sudern-Martigny, Switzerland — may 27, 1967, Zurich) was a Swiss artist, theoretician of the new art and teacher. Gained worldwide fame thanks to the accumulated curriculum of the Bauhaus, the so-called vorkurs, which formed the basis of the teaching of many modern primary art schools.

A thoughtful researcher and sensitive to the individuality of the teacher, their theoretical and pedagogical views and, especially, the training of artists, I. Itten outlined in his famous books about color and form, published in many languages. His system is designed to not overwhelm the person, but to help the artist to choose its own path without losing confidence in their abilities. As in the Russian VKhUTEMAS, I. Itten, along with other founders of the Bauhaus, sought to overcome old uzkokorporativnyh approach to teaching artists to develop their skills of fluency of form and color as the basic universal instruments fine art .

Based on the fact that the Bauhaus was primarily a school, the researcher of its history characterizes the role of I. Itten: "In the period of initial existence of the Bauhaus, the most important person was an artist and art teacher Johannes Itten, with whom Gropius had met through his first wife, Alma Mahler (later Werfel) in Vienna, where Itten was a Private art school. First of all, he was a teacher and then completed a course to become an artist. His teacher was Adolf Helzel from Stuttgart, who, in his didactics in regard to art and the teaching of composition has influenced Itten. Undoubtedly, Itten made a deep impression on Gropius, so that even were honored to be invited to the national theatre of Weimar with a performance on "the Study of the old masters" on the occasion of the Grand opening of the Bauhaus on March 21, 1919. The first of June Itten attended the first meeting of the Council on the skill, which identified the start date of his course — October 1, 1919".

About Itene as educator and art theorist read in the Encyclopedia Archive.