Bauhaus

The Bauhaus produced many excellent artists during its short time as a school and was considered one of the best art schools of all time. An artist who taught at the Bauhaus was, Johannes Itten, who was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist and was appointed as one of the first masters at the Bauhaus in Weimar by Walter Gropius. Until 1922–1923, he was both director of the preliminary course which he had developed independently for the introductory semester and master of form for all the workshops except for the ceramic, bookbinding and printing workshops. He contributed greatly to the school and was considered as one of the best masters at the school, as Instead of having students copy works of the Old Masters, he encouraged them to explore their own feelings and to experiment with colour, materials, and forms. This course emphasised three elements: studies of natural forms and colours, the analysis of canonical artworks, and life drawing. Itten’s strength as an artist was also heightened by the fact that he was a superb art teacher who taught his students in an unconventional way. His students were often given innate objects like steel, mud, glass, paper and wood to experiment with. As Itten was of the opinion that even the most simple of things could inspire creativity in a person. For Itten, colour was life and any world without a hint of colour in it was as good as dead. However, Itten was a follower of Mazdaznan, a fire cult originating in the United States. Itten's spiritualism and the reverence in which he was held by a group of the students some of who converted to Mazdaznan created conflict with Walter Gropius who wanted to move the school in a direction that embraced mass production rather than solely individual artistic expression. The rift led to Itten's resignation from the Bauhaus and his prompt replacement by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in 1923.

Work created by Johannes Itten