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Johannes Itten Quotes

Play becomes joy, joy becomes work, work becomes play.

Play becomes joy, joy becomes work, work becomes play.

Johannes Itten
Play, Joy

Colors are forces, radiant energies that affect us positively or negatively, whether we are aware of it or not.

Johannes Itten
Color, Energy, Force
Johannes Itten, Faber Birren (1970). “The Elements of Color”, p.12, John Wiley & Sons

Color is life; for a world without color appears to us as dead. Colors are primordial ideas, the children of light.

Johannes Itten
Children, Light, Color

The effects of color are controlled by intuition.

Johannes Itten
Color, Intuition, Effects

He who wishes to become a master of color must see, feel, and experience each individual color in its endless combinations with all other colors.

Johannes Itten
Color, Wish, Individual

Only those who love color are admitted to its beauty and immanent presence. It affords utility to all, but unveils its deeper mysteries only to its devotees.

Johannes Itten
Color, Mystery, Deeper
Johannes Itten (1961). “Kunst der Farbe”, Reinhold Pub. Corp

Between black and white there throbs the universe of chromatic phenomena.

Johannes Itten
Black And White, White, Black

Color is life, for a world without color seems dead. As a flame produces light, light produces color. As intonation lends color to the spoken word, color lends spiritually realized sound to a form.

Johannes Itten
Light, Flames, Color

Colors are primordial ideas, children of the aboriginal colorless light and its counterpart, colorless darkness Light, that first phenomenon of the world, reveals to us the spirit and the living soul of the world through colors.

Johannes Itten
Children, Light, Color
Johannes Itten (1961). “Kunst der Farbe”, Reinhold Pub. Corp

The objective laws of form and color help to strengthen a person's powers and to expand his creative gift.

Johannes Itten
Power, Color, Law
Johannes Itten, Bauhaus (1975). “Design and form: the basic course at the Bauhaus and later”, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company

If you, unknowing, are able to create masterpieces in color, then unknowledge is your way. But if you are unable to create masterpieces in color out of your unknowledge, then you ought to look for knowledge.

Johannes Itten
Color, Looks, Able
Johannes Itten, Faber Birren (1970). “The Elements of Color”, p.7, John Wiley & Sons

Learning from books and teachers is like traveling by carriage, so we are told in the Veda. But, the carriage will serve only while one is on the highroad. He who reaches the end of the highroad will leave the carriage and walk afoot.

Johannes Itten
Teacher, Book, Vedas

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