Composition, Johannes Itten

Exhibition Label: "Machine in a Void: World War I & the Graphic Arts," Mar-2010, Steve Goddard Swiss-born Johannes Itten spent the war years studying art in Germany and in Austria, where he founded an innovative art school. In 1919 he received an appointment to teach at the Bauhaus in Weimar. This drawing is probably a study for one of the 10 lithographs by Itten that appeared in a portfolio published in 1919. Archive Label 2003: Itten greatly esteemed the work of Der Blaue Reiter group, and through their published journal absorbed the modern tenets of cubism and the more emotional expressionism. By 1916, Itten moved to Vienna and founded an art school, teaching with the zeal of an evangelist. When the Bauhaus school for art and design opened in Weimar in 1919, Itten was appointed a workshop Master, and rapidly developed the preliminary design course. Itten introduced a spartan Zoroastrian religion into the institution’s daily programme, extending even to changing the kitchen menu. In 1922, he resigned from the Bauhaus to establish a religious community. In following years, Itten founded another art academy, but quit to direct a textile art school until that, too, was closed in 1938 by the Nazis. Being on the regime’s list of banned artists, he emigrated to the Netherlands where he taught for a short period until he could return to politically-neutral Switzerland. He remained there, painting abstract decorative patterns and instructing art students until his death in 1967.