Detail

“I am a composer and in my pocket there are letters to my friends telling them that I see such a hopeless future I have decided to stop composing. Because I have now seen your pictures I promise you that I will burn these letters and return to my work with new hope.” These words were written in 1919 by the Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer for painter and art educator Johannes Itten, after he had seen the paintings in the exhibition rooms of the “Freie Bewegung” Artists’ Association in Vienna. At this point in time Itten was the head of his own private art school in Vienna and was just about to move to the Bauhaus in Weimar at the request of Walter Gropius. In contrast, Josef Matthias Hauer was deeply involved with his concept of twelve tone music. As a consequence the two artists exchanged views about their theories of colour and music and discovered that their models corresponded to a great degree. Hauer developed a colour circle in which he assigned warm and cold colours keys in the circle of fifths and fourths. In the summer of 1919, after Itten left for the Bauhaus where he was to head the preliminary course, there was an animated exchange of letters between the two artists. The plan to establish a music class at the newly founded Bauhaus came to nothing because of financial limitations. After the first euphoric phase of collaborative work tension built up because, despite numerous instances of overlapping, the claim of both for their concepts to be absolute was not moderated by either side.