Itten's Books finally arrived!

These two books are the documentations of the basic courses made by Johannes Itten taught at the Bauhaus and in his later teaching. I was very interested when I saw the Bauhaus exhibition at MOMA last year, and came across the name Itten when looking up Paul Klee, who also taught at the Bauhaus. I'm grateful to have a glimpse of these courses and to learn from a great teacher who lived almost a century ago.

Itten's Exercise #2

10" x 14"1/2 Charcoal.

After done with the introductory warming-up with black and white circles, this free perception and imagination exercise was carried out. Just something representational that involves contrasts of different values and areas. The main objective was to find harmony using values and forms.

Itten's Exercises #1

6"x8" Charcoal

This is an introductory exercise to learn the light-dark contrast. It was to produce a white and a black circle in whatever way I want. I think Itten meant for the students to understand that "all contrast effects are relative." How white a circle should be in order to look white right next to a black circle? How their sizes and positions effect each other and the whole composition? It was a simple but very helpful exercise that let me consider such fundamental questions.