DESIGN AND FORM
THE BASIC COURSE AT THE BAUHAUS
Johannes Itten
[Bauhaus] Johannes Itten: DESIGN AND FORM. THE BASIC COURSE AT THE BAUHAUS. New York: Reinhold, 1964. First English-language edition, third printing from 1966. Quarto. Publishers yellow cloth stamped in black. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 190 pp. 197 black and white illustrations. Front board very slightly bowed. Former owners signature to front free endpaper. Small part of rear cloth bottom edge marked by a stain. Light wear overall. Yellow spine not sunned -- very unusual for this title. Interior unmarked and clean. A nice copy of a book whose pedagogical nature invites abuse. A very good or better copy in a nearly fine dust jacket.
8.5 x 11 hardcover book with 190 pages and 197 finely-printed photos and B/W illustrations. For the first time in print a complete description of the famous basic course at the Bauhaus is presented by the teacher who organized it -- a landmark of modern art education which has become a benchmark for future courses.Translated by John Maas. Freitag 5698 (citing 2nd edition); Spalek 1119; Sharp p.161; Karpel E984: "Describes in detail [Itten's] methods of teaching all facets of design Perhaps most interesting for its detailed illustrated essays on individual students. A valuable book for the teacher of design."
Contains examples of Bauhuas art on paper, canvas, wood, metal and textiles.
- Introduction
- Light-Dark
- Color
- Material and Texture
- Form
- Rhythm
- Expressive Forms
- Subjective Forms
- A Final Word
- Index
Contains work by the following Bauhaus-era artists: Willi Bauermeister, Baumer, Bleek, Brill, Bronstein, Busse, Paul Citroen, Debus, Diamantidi, Dicker, Diekmann, Frey, Funkel, Graefe, Hansen, Hirschlaff, Hanns Hoffmann, Hans Muller,, Pap, Pfeiffer-Watenphul, Rehse, Rey, Rothe, Oskar Schlemmer, Schmidt, Schunke, Singer, Skala, Gunter Stolzl, Wotiz and many others.
From the Dust jacket: "Here for the first time is a complete description of one of the landmarks of modern art education — the famous Basic Course at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany - written by the teacher who organized it at the invitation of Walter Gropius in 1919. The Bauhaus and its leaders, among them Gropius, Feininger, Itten, Muche, Schlemmer, Klee, Kandinsky and Moholy-Nagy, have had a determining influence on the development of art and teaching in the United States. The Basic Course was organized by Johannes Itten as a trial period to judge the students with varying educational backgrounds who arrived from all parts of the country. Its purpose was three-fold: to determine the creative talents of the students, to help them in their choice of a career, and to teach elementary design as a basis for future careers in the arts. After successfully completing the Basic Course, the students were taught crafts in the Bauhaus workshop and at the same time were trained as designers for future cooperation with industry."
"Itten describes his methods for encouraging the student to highly individual and creative uses of light and dark, material and texture, rhythm, expressive and subjective form, and colour. Each of the 197 plates has a detailed description which will help the reader to understand the purpose of art education. The wide range of original student works includes studies of nature, pure forms and abstractions, as well as three-dimensional works and projects in the applied arts. In addition there are some very exciting documents on the evolution of modern art education."
As a practical book for art educators today, DESIGN AND FORM far surpasses the many other sources of historical facts on the Bauhaus. It explains the Basic Course as a means for individual creative growth and can be used by all art teachers as a foundation for their own basic courses. In an article on the Bauhaus (Architectural Review, August, 1957) H. Von Erffa states: "Itten was our guiding spirit... the strongest personality at the Bauhaus... The teaching methods that Itten used in those early days, and which were partly his invention, are now widely used in the United States."
Johannes Itten: Without Mondrian, Le Corbusier and Kandinsky it would be hard to visualize the development of art and architecture in the years around 1920. The fundamentals are contained in the work of these artists. The question of art education, however, engaged the attention of two men in particular, Johannes Itten and Paul Klee. Johannes Itten put his stamp on the preli-minary course at the Bauhaus. Itten's work here between 1919 and 1923 was unique. It was repeated by his pupils and successors and further developed by Itten himself during his periods of teaching in Berlin, Krefeld and Zurich.
Being as much a resourceful teacher as an imaginative artist, these two sides of his striking personality have always comple-mented each other. Various elements have contributed to his formation: His youthful admiration for Van Gogh, Cezanne and the Cubist Artists in Paris, and, of particular importance, the studies with Adolf Holzel in Stuttgart, where, among his fellow stu-dents, he met Schlemmer and Baumeister. Itten is not concerned with figurative or non-figurative art. His main effort is a search for the laws of color and form, harmony and contrasts, as revealed in the abstract of the Viennese period (1916-1919) as clearly as in his latest works created since his retirement as Director of the Zurich Kunstgewerbe-schule.