Drawings
Gunta Stölzl's Diary Entry, 1919-1920:
"...His [Itten's] first words were about rhythm. One must first educate one's hand, first make the fingers supple. We do finger exercises just like a pianist does. In these beginnings we already sense through what it is that rhythm occurs; an endless circular movement begun with the fingertips, the movement floods through the wrist, elbow and shoulder to the heart; one must feel this with every mark, every line; no more drawing that is not experienced, no half-understood rhythm. Drawing is not the reproduction of what is seen, but making whatever one senses through external stimulus (naturally internal, too) flow through one's entire body; then it re-emerges as something entirely personal, as some kind of artistic creation, more simple, as pulsating life..."
Read More"...His [Itten's] first words were about rhythm. One must first educate one's hand, first make the fingers supple. We do finger exercises just like a pianist does. In these beginnings we already sense through what it is that rhythm occurs; an endless circular movement begun with the fingertips, the movement floods through the wrist, elbow and shoulder to the heart; one must feel this with every mark, every line; no more drawing that is not experienced, no half-understood rhythm. Drawing is not the reproduction of what is seen, but making whatever one senses through external stimulus (naturally internal, too) flow through one's entire body; then it re-emerges as something entirely personal, as some kind of artistic creation, more simple, as pulsating life..."
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Head of Madonna
Analysis of the Old Masters
Preliminary course under Johannes Itten
Bauhaus Weimar, 1919
22.5x16.6 cm
Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin
The artist also wrote down the course
'Analysis of the Old Masters' given by Itten.
Manuscript (in German) at the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin.
Published in "Das Frühe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten",
Gerd Hatje, 1994