Analysis of Textbooks On Color Science of the Bauhaus High School of Construction and Design

Abstract

Pedagogical achievements of the Bauhaus creative school influenced the development of world art but the educational foundations, behind which there was an amazing mentoring work, remained in educational literature. Textbooks on Color Science by two luminaries of abstract art – J. Itten and J. Albers – finally changed the attitude toward removing the knowledge of color from academic supervision. Since then, educational innovations of this content have not gone unnoticed, but continue to reveal the unrestrained color diversity for everyone who seeks to understand in color contexts not only external attractiveness, but also a special progress of the inner worldview.
The study of the leading degree of entry into the specialized pedagogical principles of the formation of a modern designer is not possible today without mastering the basic foundations of constructive and professional thinking, which embodies, without exaggeration, the extremely complex language of "coloristic form formation". The leading role of the indicative denominator, in the assimilation of time-tested color knowledge, belongs to the founding platform of the historical European model – the Bauhaus High School of Construction and Design. Starting from 1919, when the Swiss artist Johannes Itten joined the main teaching circle of creative figures, the validity of the rethinking of the practical value of color in innovative teaching was already successfully established at the methodological and theoretical level – in the development of its own leading educational course and the compilation of a coherent pedagogical work, known as "The Art of Color".
The analysis of a textbook treasure of this level is a powerful source for finding innovative applications of little-known practical mechanisms related to the renewal of existing thematic norms of the segmentation of the science of color as a magical art. In addition, the article pays attention to the analysis of the popular abroad manual "The Interaction of Color" of the authorship of already well-known graduate, and later the mentor of the Bauhaus school, Joseph Albers.