Johannes Itten:

The Elements of Color

7 types of colour harmony
& contrast

Johannes Itten (1888-1967)

-painter, designer, teacher
(http://www.johannesitten.com/ )

Space Composition, I
[Raum Komposition I]
Itten (1944)

Art of the Color

(Kunst der Farbe)
Itten

Ittens
colour
wheel

1. contrast of
hue

Painting with
Three Spots Wassily Kandinsky
(1914)

(hue)

Improvisation 31
(Sea Battle) Wassily Kandinsky
(1913)

Hue

The Gate
Hans Hoffman (1960)

2. light/dark
contrast

The Black Feather

Hat - Gustav Klimt
(1910)

warm colours

cool colours

3. cold/warm
contrast

Landscape - Cezanne

Mounte Sainte Victoire Cezanne (c. 1885)

A red-violet juxtaposed to blue looks warm (left),

while the same red-violet juxtaposed to red looks
cool

The narrow red bars advance

toward the viewer, while the
cooler blue recedes.

4. complementary contrast

Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret- Delacroix

Y-P: strongest
value contrast

R-G: equal
value contrast

5. simultaneous
contrast

Marilyn Andy Warhol

ANDY WARHOL/SUPERNOVA: Stars,

Deaths, and Disasters, 1962 - 1964

are the reds the same?

simultaneous
contrast also
occurs with
value contrast

6. contrast of
saturation

Portrait of Franz Marc

Macke (1910)

Contrast of saturation: This is the degree of

purity of the color, so it is possible to contrast a
pure, intense color with a dull, diluted color.
There are four ways to dilute a color:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Tint (add white).

Shade (add black).
Add gray (heading toward neutrality)
Add the complementary color

Adding gray to a pure color demonstrates one way color

can be desaturated. The grays in the corners of each
pattern are the same neutral gray

7. contrast of extension

Starry Night Van Gogh (1889)

relative areas of
complementary
colours for
balance to the
eye

A red/green checkboard pattern looks static compared to a

green field sprinkled with small red squares, illustrating one
way to manipulate contrast of extension

other harmonies:
monochromatic

Woman Darning Vuillard

analogous
or
adjacent

Orange and Yellow

Mark Rothko
(1956)

Head of a Man
Paul Klee