Previous to the 1930s, the models adopted in 'progressive' colour teaching tended to derive from the Post-Impressionism of the late 19th century, and notably the work of such artists as Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), and the later works of and Claude Monet (1840-1926).

In the 1920s there had been a return, generally speaking, to 'objective' observation (rather than 'subjective' expressionism), manifested in America by Georgia O'Keeffe and painters of the Precisionist School (including Charles Sheeler), and in Britain by teachers at the Euston Road School (William Coldstream, Claude Rogers, etc.).

The 1930s saw the emigration of influential teachers and their students from the Bauhaus in Germany primarily to the United States. Here, the new approaches to art teaching which had been developed at the Bauhaus started to emanate, at first from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's New Bauhaus in Chicago (1937-39), and subsequently into art schools throughout the USA, Europe and elsewhere.

Three particularly influential teachers who developed their artistic and educational theories while teaching at the Bauhaus were Paul Klee (1879-1940), Johannes Itten (1888-1967), and Josef Albers (1888-1976).

1. Summary of the colour theories of Paul Klee

In 1919, Paul Klee received an invitation from Walter Gropius to join the teaching staff at the newly opened Weimar Bauhaus. While preparing his first painting classes, he wrote home to his wife, Lily: 'Here in the studio I am working on half a dozen paintings, drawing, and thinking about my course, all at once, for everything must go together or it would not work at all' (Spiller, ed., 1961, p.32). Subsequently his first coherent collection of his colour teaching notes, entitled 'order in the realm of colours', was prepared for classes presented to his Bauhaus students late in 1922.

Klee's first task was to chart an orderly analysis of colour in relation to practical aspects of painting (specifically watercolour painting) and rapidly establishes a passage from the theoretical to the practical, so that simple formulas inspire experimental and open-ended possibilities.

He begins his classes by discussing the sequence of colours manifested in the rainbow (Spiller, ed., 1961, p.467). In order to obtain a useful teaching tool, he modifies and rationalises this sequence by adopting the six-section colour circle, as devised by J. W. von Goethe (1749-1832), with red opposite green, orange opposite blue, and yellow opposite violet.

Figure 1. Colour circle.

Klee then positions this colour circle to form a disc located horizontally within the colour sphere, similar to an arrangement devised in 1810 by Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810). This three-dimensional arrangement permitted Klee to arrive at a useful organisation of colour in which white is located at the top of the figure (and approached by increasingly lighter variations of each hue) and is black at the base (approached by increasingly darker variations). Importantly, this allowed Klee to clarify the relationship between hue (colour), tonality (value) and colourfulness (chroma).

Unlike Runge, who merely mapped out the overall relationship of hue to tonality, Klee stresses the exploratory potential for movements within the colour sphere itself: after examining the 'diametric' movement of the (complementary) hues across the colour circle, he turns his attention to the 'peripheral' movement of the (primary and secondary) colours located around its circumference.

Having established a useful theoretical model, Klee turns his attention specifically to the visual experience of diametrically opposed colour comparisons, observed by Goethe as complementary-colour after-images: 'Experiment shows that if we expose our eyes to red for a while and then suddenly look away, an astonishing after effect is produced: we see not red but green' (Spiller, ed., 1961, p. 473).

Eager then to transform such observations into practical experiment, Klee turns to his watercolour box to see what happens when, as transparent paints, complementary red and green colorants are glazed repeatedly one over the other. The outcome is that, although no grey paint is used, where the number of red layers equals the number of green layers, a neutral grey mixture-colour is obtained. Additionally, he observes, 'This median colourlessness decreases ... to the left in favour of increasing red, and to the right in favour of increasing green.' Klee then directs his students to experiment along similar lines, working methodically with primary, secondary and complementary colours, and always taking care to allow each new application of paint 'to dry before the stove.'

Thus, the simple activity of glazing colours one over another appears to have given Klee the foundation he sought in order to link hue, value and chroma with the practical teaching of colour theory. Colour glazing also became a keystone for his achieving colour harmonies based directly on the intrinsic nature of colour and of the watercolour-glazing technique (commonly by obtaining many related colour variations from as few as two or three basic pigments).

Such principles were not just exploited in the classroom, but also significantly in a series of increasingly sophisticated watercolour paintings produced by Klee between 1921-1923. These aptly demonstrate a general rule that repeated glazes of the same or similar colour with produce a graded scale of darker tonality (value) as well as of greater or deeper colourfulness (or chroma); whereas repeated glazes of contrasting (or complementary) colours will yield darker but neutralised mixture-colours. Klee realised additionally (as also had Wassily Kandinsky), that utilising 'depth of colour' could suggest illusions of recessive (or ambiguous) depth within an abstract image, without needing to revert to traditional pictorial devices, such as highlight-and-shadow representation or linear perspective.

Further, for Klee, and unlike the Constructivists proper (such as Moholy-Nagy or even Albers), it was not usually intended as an end in itself to combine colour and contour into wholly abstract compositions. For Klee, 'a further dimension is added, 'the dimension occupied by question of content.' In other words, he did not, as a rule, consider a work complete until it had been subjected to the imaginative contemplation or fantasy of its creator. Having taken great care in creating a colour-form infrastructure, it was then his intention to extend each work into the realm of free association, admitting that 'all the partial operations suggested by my exploration of the colour circle' were always intended to be integrated ultimately 'with the more subconscious dimensions of the picture' (Spiller, ed., 1961, p. 95)

A significant aim of the colour experimentation which Klee encouraged in his students, therefore, as well as in his own work, was to produce a colour-form foundation the principal aim of which was to cross the 'bridge' from the simple colour exercise to the more-complex pictorial composition. This colour-form foundation ideally stimulated the student to discover within it, 'Figures which may be called constructions in the abstract, but which may be named manifestly as star, vase, plant, animal, head, man, etc, according to the association they have conjured up.'

2. Summary of the colour theories of Johannes Itten

A principal influence on the educational theories of Itten was Adolf Hoelzel, with whom he studied at Stuttgart Academy (1913-16). Hoelzel's teaching, unusually for its time, stressed spontaneity of personal expression in the use of colour and in gestural drawing. Additionally, while teaching in Vienna, Itten had encountered the liberal teaching theories of Franz Cizek, an early supporter of child-centred education, and intent, according to Dick Field (Field 1970, p.53) on encouraging his pupils individually to 'grow, develop and mature.'

Similarly, throughout his supervision of the Preliminary Programme at the Weimar Bauhaus (1920-23), Itten openly encouraged his students to explore their personal responses to colour, and to deduce, for example, what selected combinations of colour might reveal or communicate about the personality or 'inner life' of an individual artist.

At the same time he also held that appropriate theoretical grounding was useful, if not indispensable, in selected circumstances. While allowing that, 'In moments of strength, problems are solved instinctively,' he acknowledged also that 'Doctrines and theories are best for weaker moments,' and that 'We can be released from subjective bondage only through knowledge and awareness of objective principles' (Itten, 1973, p. 12).

In his major work, Kunst der Farben, first published in 1961, Itten does not propose an identifiable 'colour theory' as such but, rather, offers a framework within which the student may explore what he considers are essential areas of investigation. His contribution, in his own words, is to furnish 'a serviceable conveyance in which the color artist may travel a longish distance upon his way' (Itten, 1973, p. 153). Central to this approach was to divide colour study into three initial categories:

1. Impression (the objective observation of colour).
2. Expression (the emotional response to colour)
3. Construction (the symbolic or abstract use of colour)

In each of these the student is invited to explore seven categories of colour comparison, as follows:

1. Contrast of hue, including contrast of hue with black and white
2. Contrast of light-dark (value or tonality), to include lightening and darkening colorants with black and white.
3. The cold-warm contrast of hue. 4. Complementary colour contrast, in which vivid colours are progressively neutralised when mixed with others opposite on the colour circle.
5. Simultaneous colour contrast.
6. Contrast of saturation (or chroma).
7. Contrast of extension (comparison of the varying size or proportion of adjacent colour areas).

Itten's if easily grasped (if simplistic) framework might be considered sufficient but for its omission of the temporal experience of colour perception (included by Klee and Albers), such as after-image and visual search patterns. In other respects, his 'seven colour contrasts' are not dissimilar to the seven categories of 'color-contrast' proposed by Hilaire Hiler (1898-1966) in 1942 (Hiler, 1942, p. 9) and the six variations of colour comparisons proposed by Paul Renner (1878-1956) in 1947 (Renner, 1964, p. 54). Along with an investigation of colour, Itten urges awareness of the expressive potential of such formal factors as transparency and opacity, near and far, lightweight and heavyweight, and rare and dense.

Itten's significant impact on the first three years of the Bauhaus' operation was curtailed in 1923, when he was dismissed and replaced by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. As a consequence, Itten's emphasis on the expression of subjectivity by graphic and colour means was to be superseded by the relatively 'objective' language of Constructivism. Moholy-Nagy's arrival also seemed to initiate a self-consciousness in the imaginative 'romanticism' of both Kandinsky and Klee, so that, from 1923, the work of both becomes noticeably more hard-edged, severe and restrained.

Unlike Klee and Albers, Itten's text includes information on scientific colour principles first stated by Isaac Newton. He offers also a useful framework for a methodical study of colour and proceeds to discuss them, as best he can, in relation to pictorial art; such a discussion is not attempted, for example, by Albers.

3. Summary of the colour theories of Josef Albers

Albers was a student at the Bauhaus for several years, including under Itten, before being invited by Moholy-Nagy to assist him in teaching the compulsory Preliminary Course. Albers had previously studied in Berlin, Essen and Munich. After emigrating to the United States, in 1933, he taught at Black Mountain College, and then at Yale, following which his celebrated Interaction of Color was published by Yale University Press in 1963.

There is little evidence that Albers' studied colour methodically until the late 1940s. One might propose that it was not until he had distilled his formal compositions to the ultimate simplicity of the Homage to the Square format (a square within a square within a square, Fig. 2), that he found himself facing something of a 'formal dead-end.' In looking for new avenues of exploration, it may have seemed an obvious possibility, at least temporarily, to hold the format constant, and begin a methodical exploration of colour. In the event, this exploration was to hold so many possibilities (in his art and in his teaching) that it remained far from exhausted even at his death in 1976. It was perhaps the stability of the Homage design that offered such an ideal foundation from which to examine so extensively what Albers acknowledged to be the 'relativity and instability' of colour relationships and illusions.

Fig. 2.

The original edition of Interaction of Color consisted of a boxed portfolio of some 150 small-scale silkscreen prints, illustrating remarkable examples of so-called optical colour illusions accompanied by a sparse descriptive text. The images include some of the finest examples of Albers' students' colour exercises undertaken at Yale University between 1950-60. The publication begins his 'experimental way of studying color' by encouraging the student to experiment with simple abstract designs in order to make the same colour physically look different psychologically within different contexts. This is most easily accomplished by placing two small rectangles of colour on differently coloured backgrounds. Following repeated tries, 'It is discovered that certain colours are hard to change, and that others are more susceptible to change' (Albers, 1975, p. 9).

Not unlike Klee's colour teaching, it is from such simple (but challenging) beginnings that the student is invited to explore further and more open-ended possibilities. The benefit of repeating such exercises results not only in greater awareness of effects which a casual or untrained observer might not notice, but also in sensitising the student to the subtle modifications which occur when colours are placed in close proximity. Further exercises involve the student in the accurate assessment of transparency and translucency illusions.

An obvious omission from the Interaction of Color, as Albers acknowledges, is any substantial discussion of how much surface colour depends on the light source illuminating it. Neither is their significant mention of the human visual system itself. In the questionable opinion of Albers, 'the scientific analysis of the physical qualities [of light] is not a problem for the colorist.'

Albers colour teaching was undoubtedly influential on a number of prominent 'Op Artists' of the 1960s and beyond (perhaps most importantly Richard Anuszkiewicz). In other respects, however, all the illusory effects to which her refers would have been familiar to Michel-Eugene Chevreul, whose publication, De la Loi du contraste simultane des couleurs of 1839, still represents the most thorough survey of optical colour contrast effects yet undertaken. Even so, Chevreul appears not fully to have understood the principles of additive colour mixing (established decisively by James Clerk Maxwell a dozen or so year later, and published comprehensively by Ogden Rood in 1879.) Albers, however, may be congratulated in enthusing a new generation of students and artists with a desire to investigate perceptual colour effects primarily within the context of abstract and Colour Field painting.

Regarding further analysis of Albers' published colour theories, in The Hidden Order of Art, first published 1967, Anton Ehrenzweig (1908-66) commends Albers' compilation, but notes especially that 'the all-important relationship between form and colour' is conspicuous by its absence. Ehrenzweig argues that, reasonably comprehensive though the Interaction of Color may be, within its specialism, Albers has omitted at least one principle able potentially to provide a rich basis for encouraging 'by trial and error - an eye for color:'

Broadly speaking, a strong composition inhibits the mutual enhancement of colour surfaces (simultaneous colour contrast, colour interaction); conversely the mutual enhancement of colours tends to weaken form and tonal contrasts, [and] the relationship between figure and ground and illusions of depth produced by perspective. (Ehrenzweig, 1993, p.155)

In other words Ehrenzweig argues that, while Albers 'systematic exercises' cannot but succeed in increasing the student's awareness of colour interaction (or the relationship between colour and colour), they do so at the expense of tediousness of form. (Albers, it may be remembered was a prominent Bauhaus-master at a time when the functionalist ethic was at its height.)

The probable reasoning behind Albers' approach was that simplicity of form will tend to throw greater emphasis on colour. The suppression of one or more parameter in any methodical activity will tend to sharpen the focus on others, as one may find in the early Minimalist Colour Field paintings by William Turnbull, Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, and even Albers himself. Paul Renner similarly recommended that simple grids of horizontal lines be used for his colour exercises at least as early as 1947.

Such simple formats were characteristic of the work of the painter and colour educator Alan Cuthbert (1931-95). In the evolution of his own colour theories in relation to form, he observed:

When first working with colour, I tried, as many others have done, to relate colour to preconceived formats. As a result of exploring colour in a methodical ways, and understanding more about the way colour is structured in relation to perception, I slowly arrived at concepts where the structure and the nature of colour presented their own formal possibilities. (1989, in conversation with the author)

Ehrenzweig admits disappointment that Albers' 'magnificent book ... hardly mentions how much active colour interaction depends on comparative weakness of form,' especially as 'his own painting is perhaps the best example of this law.' Much of the last 25 years of Albers' life was dedicated to painting variations of the Homage to the Square series, in which a large square contains squares of decreasing size. As Ehrenzweig observed, 'the weakest shape one can put into a square is another smaller square;' as a consequence, the interaction of colour within such a formally un-distracting design is 'greatly enhanced.'

Ehrenzweig observes that 'Equally weak is a circle within a circle in the manner of fashionable "target" pictures' (by Robert Delaunay, Jasper Johns, Peter Sedgley, etc). While this strategy of 'non-distracting form' may have satisfied Albers' own artistic aims, from an educational standpoint there is a danger of it presenting something of a dead-end for students wishing to work within much more complex (and especially pictorial) compositions. As Dick Field warned, in the context of overt Bauhaus influences in the art-school teaching of his time:

An inevitable problem comes to the front at this point: the difficulty students experience in using the Basic Course ... unless they followed its forms and continued to work in an abstract way. The problem was obscured by the fact that most students [at that time] wanted to work abstractly;... but there were always students unable to move on. (Field, 1970, p.64.)

The writer has attempted to examine methodically the relationship between colour and 'form' in the text of The Colour Coursebook (to be published). By this I mean the relationship between colour and various abstract and pictorial 'formal' devices, to include figure-ground division and ambiguity, contour, highlight-and-shadow, texture, opacity and transparency, pattern and composition. Integrating an exploration of colour-form relationships (in addition to colour-colour relationships) may be considered an enhancement of the creative practices of the artist, augmenting whatever else may be the content or intention of a visual artwork or design.

Ehrenzweig comes close to recommending such an approach to teaching colour theory in relation to figure-ground perception of 'form' when he states, with reference to Josef Albers and Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-94):

The incisiveness of form, such as the comparative sharpness of outline ... can be summed up as qualities of 'good' gestalt. We can summarize therefore that colour interaction between figure and ground stands in inverse proportion to the good gestalt of the figure. (Ehrenzweig, 1993, p.159)

A principle implied here is that distinct figure-ground divisions will tend to discourage active colour interaction, for the simple reason that colours associated with an 'advancing figure' will not so easily interact with colours associated with a 'receding ground.' However, Ehrenzweig's own 'experimental course for art teachers' (described in The Hidden Order of Art), confined colours within simple, geometrical (chessboard) grids, and appears (like Albers) somewhat to have missed the opportunity of exploring the relationship between colour and more-complex (especially pictorial) formats.

In theory, a practice of 'dissolving' figure-ground divisions (or encouraging figure-ground ambiguity) will also increase the interaction (or ease of comparison) of colours throughout a composition or design as a whole. Such a strategy would of course destroy legibility in the instance of typographical design, and remove most of the clues for the perception of solid objects in space within an interior design. But within a painting, where such factors need not be a central consideration, dissolution of the division between figure and ground can provide a challenging strategy in investigating the relationship between colour and form.

There are numerous ways of undermining clear figure-ground divisions, such as rejecting contrasts of highlight-and-shadow (Pierre Bonnard, etc), fragmenting linear perspective (Picasso and Braques' Cubism, etc), introducing transparency of both colour and form (Paul Klee in his watercolours, etc), fragmenting contours (Paul Cezanne, etc), avoiding size clues by adopting regular patterning (Bridget Riley, etc), and so on. Many such methods have been exploited (intuitively or otherwise) by artists throughout the 20th century.

R.O.

References:

Josef Albers, Interaction of Color (1975). New Haven: Yale University Press. Original edition 1963.
Michel-Eugene Chevreul & Faber Birren, ed. (1967), The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours. Original French edition, 1939.
Anton Ehrenzweig (1993), The Hidden Order of Art. London: Weidenfeld. Original edition 1967.
Dick Field (1970), Change in Art Education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hilaire Hiler (1942), Color Harmony and Pigments. Chicago & New York: Favor, Ruhl.
Johannes Itten (1973), The Art of Color. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Original German edition 1961.
Wassily Kandinsky (1977), Concerning the Spritual in Art. New York: Dover Publications. Original German edition, 1912.
Paul Renner (1964), Color: Order and Harmony. London: Studio Vista. Original German edition, 1947.
Ogden Rood & Faber Birren, ed. (1973), Modern Chromatics. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Original American edition, 1879).
Jurg Spiller, ed. (1961), Paul Klee: The Thinking Eye. London: Lund Humphries. Original German edition, 1956.

Survey of books on colour education since 1800

1805 Mary Gartside, An Essay on Light and Shade, on Colours, and on Composition in General. London.
1809 James Sowerby (1757-1822), A New Elucidation of Colours, Original, Prismatic and Material. London.
1810 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Zur Farbenlehre. Tuebingen.
1810 Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810), Die Farbenkugel. Hamburg.
1817 George Field (1777-1854), Chromatics, or An Essay on the Analogy and Harmony of Colours. London.
1826 Charles Hayter (1761-1835), A New Practical Treatise on the Three Primitive Colours. London.
1838 Frank Howard (1805-66), Colour as a Means of Art. London.
1839, Michel-Eugene Chevreul (1786-1889), De la Loi du contraste simultane des couleurs. Paris.
1850 George Field (1777-1854), Rudiments of the Painter's Art, or, A Grammar of Colouring. London.
1853 Richard Redgrave (1804-88), An Elementary Manual of Colour. London.
1857 John Ruskin (1819-1900), The Elements of Drawing. London
1867 Charles Blanc (1813-82), Grammaire des arts du dessin. Paris.
1871 Arthur Herbert Church (1834-1915), Colour, An Elementary Manual. London.
1873 Thomas Sully (1783-1872), Hints to Young Painters. New York.
1874 Wilhelm von Bezold (1837-1907), Die Farbenlehre in Hinblick auf Kunst. Braunschweig.
1879 Ogden Nicholas Rood (1831-1902), Modern Chromatics. New York & London.
1882 William Muckley, A Handbook for Painters and Art Students on the Character, Nature and Use of Colours. London.
1883 Lucretia Crocker, Lessons on Colour in Primary Schools. Chicago.
1890 Milton Bradley (1836-1911), Color in the School Room. Springfield, Massachusetts.
1895 Milton Bradley (1836-1911), Elementary Color. Springfield, Massachusetts.
1895 Mark Maycock, A Class-book for Color Teachers. Buffalo, New York.
1896 Helena Chace, Practical Color Work for Primary and Ungraded Schools. Springfield, Mass.

1900 Anson Kent Cross (1862-1944), Color Study, A Manual for Teachers and Students. Boston.
1900 George Henry Hurst, Colour, A Handbook of the Theory of Colour. London. 1902 James Ward (1851-1924), Colour Harmony and Contrast for the Use of Art Students, Designers and Decorators. London.
1905 Albert Henry Munsell (1858-1918), A Color Notation. Boston.
1915 Henry Barrett Carpenter, Suggestions for the Study of Colour. Rochdale, Lancashire.
1916 Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932), Die Farbenfibel. Leipzig.
1918 Matthew Luckiesh (1889-1967), The Language of Color. New York.
1921 Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925), Das Wesen der Farben. Dornach.
1923 Walter Sargent (1868-1927), The Enjoyment and Use of Colour. New York.
1925 Maurice de Boigey, The Science of Colour and the Art of the Painter. London.
1925 Michael Jacobs, The Study of Color, with Lessons and Exercises. New York.
1927 Frederick Le Roy Sargent (1863-1928), Working System of Color for Students of Art and Nature. New York.
1928 Herbert Rankin, Simple Lessons in Colour. London.
1933 Anna Marie Anderson, Syllabus of Design and Color. New York.
1933 Arthur MacMorland, Colour: Theory and Practice for Schools and Colleges. London.
1935 Arthur Allen, The Teaching of Colour in Schools. London.
1935 Oliver Jesse Tonks, Colour Practice in Schools. London.
1942 Hilaire Hiler (1898-1966), Color Harmony and Pigments. Chicago & New York.
1947 Paul Renner (1878-1956), Color: Order and Harmony. New York.
1952 Maitland Graves, Color Fundamentals. New York.
1961 Faber Birren (1900-88), Creative Color. New York.
1961 Johannes Itten (1888-1967), Kunst der Farben. Ravensburg.
1962 Frank Taylor, Colour Technology for Artists, Craftsmen and Industrial Designers. Oxford & London.
1963 Josef Albers (1888-1976), Interaction of Color. New Haven, Conn..
1967 Hal Helman, The Art and Science of Color. New York.
1971 Gottfried Tritten, Teaching Colour and Form. New York.
1972 Harald Kueppers, Farbe: Urspring, Systematik, Anwendung. Munich.
1973 Frans Gerritsen, Het fenomem kleur. Amsterdam.
1974 Joseph Gatto, Color and Value: Design Elements. Massachusetts.
1977 Harald Kueppers, Das Grundgesetz der Farbenlehre. Cologne.
1980 Roy Osborne (b. 1948), Lights and Pigments: Colour Principles for Artists. London.
1983 Enid Verity, Colour: Why the World Isn't Grey. Harmondsworth.

Back to top