Johannes Itten:The Elements of Color

7 types of colour harmony& contrast

Johannes Itten (1888-1967)-painter, designer, teacher (http://www.johannes-itten.com/ )

Space Composition, I[Raum Komposition I] –Itten (1944)

Art of the Color (Kunst der Farbe)Itten

Itten’s colour wheel

Painting with Three Spots -Wassily Kandinsky(1914)

1. contrast of hue

Improvisation 31 (Sea Battle) -Wassily Kandinsky(1913)

(hue)

The Gate –Hans Hoffman (1960)

Hue

The Black Feather Hat - Gustav Klimt (1910)

2. light/darkcontrast

warm colours

cool colours

3. cold/warmcontrast

Landscape - Cezanne

Mounte Sainte Victoire – Cezanne (c. 1885)

A red-violet juxtaposed to blue looks warm (left), while the same red-violet juxtaposed to red looks cool

The narrow red bars advance toward the viewer, while the cooler blue recedes.

4. complementary contrast

Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret- Delacroix

Y-P: strongest value contrast

R-G: equal value contrast

5. simultaneous contrast

Marilyn -Andy Warhol

ANDY WARHOL/SUPERNOVA: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters, 1962 - 1964

are the reds the same?

simultaneous contrast also occurs with value contrast

Portrait of Franz Marc – Macke (1910)

6. contrast of saturation

Contrast of saturation: This is the degree of purity of the color, so it is possible to contrast a pure, intense color with a dull, diluted color.

There are four ways to dilute a color:

1. Tint (add white).2. Shade (add black).3. Add gray (heading toward neutrality)4. Add the complementary color

Adding gray to a pure color demonstrates one way color can be desaturated. The grays in the corners of each pattern are the same neutral gray

7. contrast of extension

Starry Night – Van Gogh (1889)

relative areas of complementary colours for balance to the eye

A red/green checkboard pattern looks static compared to a green field sprinkled with small red squares, illustrating one way to manipulate contrast of extension

other harmonies:

monochromatic

Woman Darning -Vuillard

analogous oradjacent

Orange and Yellow – Mark Rothko (1956)

Head of a Man – Paul Klee