JOHANNES ITTEN & : NATURE IN FOCUS 8.8.–22.11.2020 ENGLISH

INTRODUCTION (1888–1967) is a prominent figure in twentieth-century art history. What not many people know, however, is how much his perceptions of landscape and nature were influenced by his early years in Thun and his ramblings around and the surrounding area. The exhibition begins with these early days in Itten’s career and presents a number of never-before-seen and drawings that document the extent to which the artist’s experience of the landscape around Thun inspired a concept of nature that was fundamental to his art, helping us to trace a trajectory from the nature studies of his youth to his work after 1940.

1 BIOGRAPHY studies again in October at weaving and teaches at the 1939 the École des Beaux-Arts in affiliated art school. Holds Weds Anneliese Schlösser. 1888 . lectures on Mazdaznan Johannes Itten is born on teachings. 1943 11 November in Süderen-­ 1913 Director of the Textilfach- Linden (Bernese Oberland) Returns to . Switches 1925 schule der Seidenindus- to the teacher and ­farmer to the Academy of Fine Arts Moves to Berlin. triegesellschaft (Textile Johannes Itten and Elise in , studying with School of the Silk Indus- Jost, a farmer’s daughter. Adolf Hölzel. 1926 try Society) in Zurich (until Founds the Modern Art 1960). 1892 1914 School of Berlin. Father’s death. Itten lives When the war breaks out, 1944 for two years with his Itten temporarily returns to 1929 Exhibition “Colour in Nature, grandmother in the Jost Thun. Master student with Opens the Itten School in a Art, Science and Technol- family house in Hölzel in Stuttgart starting new building at Konstanzer ogy” at the Kunstgewerbe- above . in November. Strasse 14 in Berlin-Wilm- museum in Zurich. ersdorf on 1 December. 1894 1916 1948 Itten moves back in with Solo exhibition at ­Herwarth 1930 Solo exhibition in New York. his mother. He has a tense Walden’s gallery “Der Publishes his Tagebuch. relationship with his step- Sturm” in Berlin. Moves to Beiträge zu einem Kontra- 1949 father. He spends win- in October. Founds punkt der Bildenden Kunst Commissioned to set up ters in Süderen-Linden and a private art school. (Diary: Contributions on a the Museum Rietberg, a summers on the Marbach Counterpoint of Visual Art). museum of non-European alpine pasture in . 1917–1918 art in Zurich. Makes contacts on the 1932 1898–1904 Viennese art, music and lit- Named director of the 1952 Schooling in Thun. Itten erature scene, including Krefeld School of Textile Opening of the Museum lives on the castle hill with . Design in January. Teaches Rietberg. Director of the his uncle and aunt. week-long courses in Berlin museum until 1956. 1919 and Krefeld. 1904–1908 Walter Gropius appoints 1955 Teacher training seminar in Itten to the . Itten 1934 Studio in Unterengstringen Hofwil near Bern and from weds Hildegard Anbelang The Itten School in Berlin in the Limmat Valley near 1906 in Bern. In March 1908 in Thun. Moves to Wei- closes. Zurich. Itten attains his primary mar in October and begins teaching license. teaching at the Bauhaus. 1937 1957 Works by Itten are includ- Retrospective at the 1908–1909 1919–1923 ed in the summer exhibition Stedelijk Museum in Primary school teacher in Sets up the foundation “” in Munich. Amsterdam. Schwarzenburg near Bern. course at the Bauhaus. The City of Krefeld dismiss- Master of form in vari- es Itten as school director. 1961 1909 ous workshops. Studio in Publication Die Kunst der From October art studies at the “Templar House”. Pro- 1938 Farbe (The Art of Colour). the École des Beaux-Arts in duces major works includ- The Krefeld School of Geneva. ing the Tower of Light/ Tow- ­Textile Design closes on 31 1962 er of Fire and the Portrait of March. After many years Solo exhibition at 1910 a Child. of separation, divorce from Kunstmuseum­ Thun. Drops out of the École des Hildegard Itten-Anbelang. Beaux-Arts and returns to 1920 Emigrates to Amsterdam. 1964 Bern. Attends a Mazdaznan con- Commissioned to paint Retrospective at the ference in Leipzig with a velum (ceiling cover- Kunsthaus­ Zürich. 1910–1912 . Spreads ing) for the staircase of the Training as a secondary the Mazdaznan teachings Stedelijk­ Museum. 1966 school teacher at the Uni- of O. Z. Hanish at the Bau- Itten represents Switzer- versity of Bern. haus. Internal conflicts with 1938–1953 land at the 33rd Venice ­Gropius, among others. Appointed director of the Biennale. 1911 Kunstgewerbemuseum and Exhibition of the oil 1923–1925 Kunstgewerbeschule in 1967 Early Spring on the Rhone Itten leaves the Bauhaus in Zurich (Museum and School Johannes Itten dies on 25 at the Kunstmuseum Bern. March. Joins the Interna- of Decorative Arts), where March in Zurich. tional Mazdaznan Temple he stays until his retirement 1912 Community in Herrliberg at the end of 1953. Numer- Travels to exhibitions in on Lake Zurich. Founds ous exhibitions on issues Paris, Munich, Cologne the Ontos Workshops for in art, decorative arts and and Amsterdam. Takes up hand weaving and carpet industrial design.

2 OVERVIEW

Zurich years Zurich years Zurich years 3 2 1

Tree studies ARRI project room

Seclusion in Film Sigriswil Berlin – Krefeld – Amsterdam

WC Biography Itten at at Itten the Bauhhaus Thun landscapes­

Cash desk / Family and reception friends Early

landscapes Vienna years

FAMILY AND FRIENDS skill at clearly accentuating the main lines of the landscape Itten spent his youth working outdoors close to nature, structures he observed in a mode verging on abstraction. passing the summer months from 1894 onward on the Mar- His paintings then add expressive colouring and lively bach alpine pastures in Eriz. In 1898 his uncle Jakob Itten, lighting. Itten produced his first large-format oil painting, a well-off notary and president of the citizens’ council in Early Spring on the Rhone, in the spring of 1911 and present- Thun, enabled Itten to continue his education there by tak- ed it in the Christmas exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bern ing over the guardianship for him and his sister Maria Eli- that same year, launching his career as an artist. sa. From 1894 to 1904, Itten lived on the castle hill in Thun with his uncle and aunt and their children. He attended pri- THUN LANDSCAPES mary school there, and then secondary school from 1899 It comes as no surprise that Itten’s oeuvre begins with to 1904. These years of a strict upbringing and schooling landscapes and that renderings of nature would go on to are documented by photos showing Itten in 1903 among shape his art throughout his lifetime. Motifs from the coun- the Thun Cadets, and surrounded by family at the wedding tryside around Thun recur throughout his work: nature and of his cousin Arnold Itten in April 1910. Itten depicted his landscape, mountains, hills, valleys, trees and “trees of life”, family members in Thun in various portrait studies. In con- flowers and fruit still lifes as well as the four seasons are trast to the urban milieu of Thun, his autumn school holi- central themes of his art. At the same time, Itten’s engage- days were spent with his mother in the countryside tend- ment with the Cubist principles of prismatic formal analy- ing the livestock. sis and polyperspectivity also left a mark on his landscape depictions. Quite a few of his early works are still in the EARLY LANDSCAPES possession of family members in Thun or are connected Among the formative experiences of his youth were Itten’s with the city through their provenance. For a long time, it unforgettable adventures in nature in the Bernese Ober- was not clear where the painting titled Houses by the Water land and Thun countryside. Although no examples of his was made, but now historical photographs have been first attempts at painting from his early Thun years before uncovered that prove that this key work shows a motif not 1907 have survived, his memoirs document a world of fan- from Stuttgart but rather the prominent sawtooth-roofed tasy and imagination that was deeply influenced by the buildings of Selve AG in Thun. time he spent there exploring nature and the landscape. In small sketches and oil paintings, Itten captured the natu- SECLUSION IN SIGRISWIL ral surroundings of his childhood in the hills above Thun as Itten wrote one of his important artistic diaries during a well as in Hofwil near Bern, where he did his teacher train- stay in the countryside around Sigriswil, from late July ing. His early composition sketches already attest to his to late September 1918. He outlined therein most of the

3 Johannes Itten (with wheelbarrow), his mother, and siblings Rudolf (right) Portrait Johannes Itten in a paint smock with Golden Ratio-Compass and and Marie (center), 1894 Color Star

artistic and art theory principles he would later put into to the Spanish flu in 1918. One year later, Itten married her practice in his work at the Bauhaus in : rhythm and sister Hildegard Anbelang in Thun’s Schlosskirche. harmony in music and painting, polarity theory, colour the- During this period, Itten outlined his artistic creed in a ory, expression through form, analyses of the Old Masters, large number of important drafts, sketches, poems, archi- and time-space-movement as theme. tectural drawings, observations and aesthetic maxims. A postcard that is now in the collection of the Muse- While he had thus far followed in the quite traditional foot- um of Modern Art in New York, which Itten made in August steps of his Stuttgart teacher Adolf Hölzel, he now sought 1918 for his art historian friend Hans Tietze in Vienna, to see art with new eyes, along the lines of the contem- shows a pencil sketch of the landscape panorama around porary life reform movement. Itten described the trans- Lake Thun featuring the striking form of Mount Niesen. formation of a subjectively experienced natural form into Tongue-in-cheek, he inscribed the words “I am here” on an art form governed by objective laws as “dematerialisa- the Sigriswil mountain ridges surrounding Lake Thun near tion”. The esoteric Mazdaznan teachings took on increas- Zelg and continued on the back, “in the most beautiful spot ing importance for him. on earth and I’m content.” JOHANNES ITTEN AS MASTER AT THE VIENNA YEARS WEIMAR BAUHAUS (1919–1923) Following his studies with Adolf Hölzel in Stuttgart, Itten In February 1919, Itten was appointed as one of the first moved to Vienna in October 1916 at the age of 27 with the masters at the Bauhaus in Weimar, by the founder Walter support of a fellow student from Stuttgart named Agathe Gropius. Itten arrived in Weimar with his wife Hildegard on Mark(-Kornfeld). Agathe Mark-Kornfeld introduced him to 2 October and set up his studio in the so-called Templar Vienna’s society with its avant-garde artist circles. Itten House in the Ilm Park, taking up his teaching duties on 3 rapidly made the acquaintance of renowned artists, archi- November. A group of around 20 of Itten’s Vienna students tects, composers, poets, philosophers, art historians and accompanied him to Weimar. He proceeded to develop a bons vivants including Carl Moll, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf “foundation course” on the fundamentals of artistic design Loos, Franz Werfel, Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg, Josef as a compulsory course for Bauhaus students. As a Bau- Matthias Hauer, Hans Pfitzner, Rudolf Steiner, Hans Tietze, haus “master of form”, he was involved in setting up work- Josef Strzygowski and Alma Mahler. Friendly contact with shops for glass painting, stone sculpture, carpentry (1920– the composer Matthias Hauer and with Alma Mahler-Gro- 1922), weaving (1920/21) and metalworking (1920–1922). At pius would have far-reaching consequences for Itten’s the turn of the year 1919/20, Itten produced his major work future career. In addition to his confidante Anna Höllering, Tower of Fire, a monumental sculpture. In the almanac Uto- Itten also met Emmy Anbelang in Vienna and proposed pia: Documents of Reality, edited by , Itten pub- marriage, but before the two could wed, Emmy fell victim lished his programmatic Analyses of Old Masters as well

4 as the paradigmatic Sphere of colours in seven bright constellations, while his interest in East Asian ink paint- graduations and twelve tonalities. With his two lithographs ing provided a steady source of fresh inspiration. His land- for the first Bauhaus portfolio,The White Man’s House scapes, plant renderings and figural images display vari- and Greetings and Hail to the Hearts, based on a text by ous levels of abstraction. ­Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish, Itten proclaimed his avowal of Mazdaznan teachings, to which he devoted himself entire- ZURICH YEARS ly during these years. After returning to for good, Itten was appoint- After his dispute with Gropius, who propagated a new ed director of the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Kunst­ unity of art and technology at the Bauhaus, came to a head gewerbemuseum of the City of Zurich (School and Muse- at the Master Council meeting of 9 December 1921, Itten um of Decorative Arts) on 1 December 1938. From 1943 to resigned from his position as master of form in the work- 1960 he then also took over the management of the tex- shops in January 1922 and retreated for the time being to tile school there, and finally, from 1949 onwards, estab- the International Mazdaznan Temple Community in Herr- lished the Museum Rietberg, a museum of non-European liberg near Zurich. He handed in his resignation on 4 Octo- art, which opened on 24 May 1952. ber and ended his activity at the Bauhaus with a farewell Itten was able to continue his artistic life’s work in lecture on 18 March 1923. Switzer­land on many fronts. His late works are distin- guished by an internalised reflection on the full set of picto- BERLIN – KREFELD – AMSTERDAM rial means, including the composition of lines and the bal- The contrast between Itten’s retreat into the esoteric Maz- ancing of light and dark and colour planes. These works daznan community in Herrliberg between 1923 and 1925 are like meditative exercises on pictorial means, manifes- and his subsequent reappearance with a project in hand tations of an artistic quest for a basso continuo in paint- for a privately financed art school in the metro­polis of ing, an art of the fugue using colours that demands noth- Berlin could hardly be greater. In September 1926, Itten ing less from the viewer than engaging with the processes opened his Modern Art School of Berlin on Nollendorfplatz, of vision itself. and in October 1927 the school then moved to Potsdam- er Strasse under the name Moderne Kunstschule Berlin. TREE STUDIES Johannes Itten. Itten employed a teaching staff of former A fervent and intimate melding with nature and its con- Bauhaus cronies – including Georg Muche, Gyula Pap templation as a mirror of one’s own physical and mental and Max Bronstein – as well as teachers of Japanese ink processes can be observed in exemplary fashion in Itten’s painting. In 1932 he also took over the management of the Tree Studies from 1966, his late period. In a format-filling newly founded School of Textile Design in Krefeld. In April and ornamental mode that verges on the abstract, Itten 1934, the Itten School in Berlin closed under pressure from depicts here the annual rings visible in the trunks of felled the Nazis, followed in March 1938 by the textile school in trees as an iconic trace of natural processes. By picturing Krefeld. The notorious “Degenerate Art” exhibition opened the growth, resting and development phases evident from in Munich in July 1937, including two works by Itten. After the divisions of the cambium, Itten simultaneously reflects Itten left Germany in the spring of 1938, he designed a on his own waning years. A photograph shows him medi- transparent ceiling covering for the Stedelijk Museum in tatively immersed in his work, crouching on the forest floor Amsterdam in which abstract ornamentation and nature and painting such a tree trunk in watercolours. His notes motifs share space. document that, while observing the energetically vibrating During these years, Itten balanced abstraction with grain patterns in the felled tree trunks, he was also reflect- figuration in his nature depictions in ever-new, complex ing on his own coronary heart disease, which he depicted

Anneliese and Johannes Itten setting up the exhibition in the Swiss Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 1966

5 Johannes Itten, in the forest, painting a watercolor of the Tree Studies series, 1966

in parallel “studies” that are analogous to this work group. Occasionally he inscribed a human figure into the live- ly ornament formed by the annual rings. Itten thus saw in these natural rings a mirror image of the cycle of life, which came full circle for him personally when he succumbed to a heart attack at Easter 1967.

ART AND LIGHT: THE ARRI PROJECT ROOM Rarely do we pay attention to how much light can change our perception of works of art, because our eyes are able to adapt quickly to new lighting situations. But light that varies over time can in fact be used to generate new per- ceptual experiences of one and the same work of art, e.g., flickering candlelight, dynamically changing light on a sum- mer’s day, or diffuse brightness on a subdued rainy day. In cooperation with the Munich-based company ARRI, a world market leader in the production of film and television cameras as well as adaptive lighting systems for over 100 years, such lighting effects can now be generated experi- mentally. With extremely energy-efficient LED lighting -fix tures, so-called Sky Panels, changing lighting situations can be staged in a completely variable way, with different colour temperatures and intensities – from the dynamically changing light of a passing cloud on a summer’s day all the way to night-time scenes. ARRI works with famous direc- tors such as Ang Lee and has been enlisted for the tech- nical realisation of ambitious films such as Sam Mendes’s visually stunning drama 1917.

The works on display in this room by Itten and his contem- poraries Otto Morach and Arnold Brügger are part of the collection of the Kunstmuseum Thun.

6 IMPRINT

Director: Helen Hirsch Curators: Helen Hirsch, Christoph Wagner Exhibition management: Simone Büsch-Küng, Noura Abla Administration: Marianne Lutz Financial management: Tanja Hählen Communication: Elsa Horstkötter Art education: Rut Reinhard, Olivia Notaro, Saba Bach, Anna-Lisa Schneeberger Exhibition installation: Simon Stalder, Henry Thomet, Mirjam Sieber, Marius Lüscher Signage: Andreas Wenger Graphic Design: Bonsma & Reist Exhibition design: Christoph Wagner, Andreas Wenger Text in this brochure: Christoph Wagner, translation: Katja Naumann

The exhibition is accompanied by a varied programme of events, for more details please visit our website kunstmuseumthun.ch

A catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition by the HIRMER VERLAG is ­available in our shop.

ISBN 978-3-7774-3569-5 (German edition) ISBN 978-3-7774-3572-5 (English edition)

Kunstmuseum Thun Thunerhof, Hofstettenstrasse 14, 3602 Thun T +41 (0)33 225 84 20 www.kunstmuseumthun.ch

With the generous support of: Partner:

Zwillenberg-Stiftung | Minerva Kunststiftung | Wüthrich-Stiftung | Ruth & Arthur Scherbarth Stiftung

7