A tribute to the founder of the modern color System.
Johannes Itten (1888-1967) was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer and teacher and in many ways the theorist and originator behind modern color definition.
With his color wheel, he succeeded in depicting the connections between the colors in an easily understandable way by defining three primary colors: Red, Yellow and Blue.
These colors cannot be mixed from any other colors. However, all other colors can be mixed from the three primary colors. When the two primary colors are mixed together in equal parts, secondary colors are created, Green (Yellow + Blue), Violet (Red + Blue), Orange (Yellow + Red). The opposite colors on the wheel are called the contrast colours, so yellow is the opposite of purple, meaning that when the colours are next to each other they optically stand out. You can explore this by placing purple grapes in a yellow bowl or red strawberries in a green bowl.
Johannes Itten was one of the first masters at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, appointed by Walter Gropius from 1919 until 1923, and later founded the Advanced School of Textile Art in Berlin. In 1934, the school was closed by the NSDAP, and Itten then became the director at the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Applied Arts) in Zürich. He joined Max Bill's Ulm School of Design (HfG) in 1955. In 1961, he published the groundbreaking book The Art of Color and said: "Colors are forces, radiant energies that affect us positively or negatively, whether we are aware of it or not."
At Copenhagen Design we developed this Pantone Soup Bowl as a tribute to him and his work.