Tonight I had the opportunity to visit the exhibition "Itten and Klee" in the Kunstmuseum in Bern, guided by one of the curators herself, Monika Schäfer.
I have to admit, I hadn't done any research beforehand and I had never heard about "Itten" before so I didn't know what to expect. Is "Itten" a place? A theory or idea? Or is it maybe another person? Pretty soon, almost immediateley it was clear to me, that "Itten" was also an artist of the same era as Paul Klee (1879-1940). Johannes Itten (1888-1967) is also, like Klee, a swiss artist from the 20th century. Not having heard from him before shamed me a little since his works, as I learned, are quite extraordinary.
The theme of the exhibition was color itself. The cosmos of color to be exact. Both artists spent an enormous amount of time studying colors. Several rooms of the exhibition were just dedicated to show their theoretical approach on color. They both were groundbreaking in our modern understanding of color, colorschemes, colorinteraction etc. And both artists worked their findings on color and their experiments into their works. In a very systematic, almost mathematical way.
The great thing about getting led through an exhibition by someone who created it, is that you get to hear alot of anecdotes. For example one about this piece "Encounter" from 1916 by Johannes Itten. It seems quite systematic, clear composition, colorful. Eventhough you can't see an actual object or something in perticular there is a rather sad backstory. A close personal friend of Itten had taken her life, shortly before this work originated. The greyish spiral that represents the tragic loss meets the more lively and colorful spiral in an intertwined "Encounter". This piece represents a great deal of pain on the artist's part.
Since I haven't really encountered Itten before, I will focus on another series of works by him, which I thought was enchanting. "Spring", "Summer", "Autumn" and "Winter" are four works of a series from a private collector that were created in 1963. You can again see the focus on the demonstration of colors and how they work together. Itten, more than Klee, also tried to apply the study of colors to other fields of sciences or areas of different focuses. For example he tried to categorize different signs in colors, or feelings and even traits of character. This series although represents his application of color to the different seasons of the year which in my opinion he managed to achieve beautifully.
