El Lissitzky - Proun Room

El Lissitzky Proun Room

1923 (reconstructed 1971)

'Proun' is a term coined by Russian Suprematist artist El Lissitzky in the early part of the twentieth century. 'Proun' does not have an exact definition, though Lissitzky stated that it was "the station where one changes from painting to architecture" or according to Wikipedia 'exploration of the visual language of suprematism with spatial elements'. The Proun works preoccupied him throughout most of his career and became formative in the development of the Utopian architectural projects he took up in later life.

In Proun Room (or Prounenraum) the artist, designer and typographer, given a small room in which to display his work,  rendered the ideas he had explored in 2 dimensions into 3. Navigating and circumscribing the walls with wooden constructions, Lissitzky plays with the perspectives and planar shifts we find in his drawings and prints throughout the room. The work remains a prototype for the installation art that would come later in the century.

None of the original 1923 piece survived after its exhibition. Several reconstructions have been made based around a few photographs of the original installation, a lithograph and a painting since 1965 (more on that here).

Bruno Taut - Glass Pavilion

Bruno Taut - Glass Pavilion 

Cologne Werkbund Exhibition 1914

Taut was a prolific German architect, and was best know for his theoretical work and the brightly coloured prismatic dome of the Glass Pavilion built for the 1914 Cologne Werkbund Exhibition. Working alongside Walter Gropius (founder of the Bauhaus school) Taut introduced the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a Total artwork including elements of painting, sculpture, music to create an "all encompassing architecture".

Taut was particularly famous because of his devotion to colour and glass. The Pavilion was accompanied by an essay written by Taut outlining the potential of different types of glass, and how the material might be used to orchestrate human emotions and assist in the construction of a spiritual utopia.

The Pavilion had poems by Paul Scheerbart written around its sides which included examples such as -

"Coloured glass destroys hatred." and "Without a glass palace, life is a conviction". Scheerbart also went on to publish a range of books about Tauts work most notably 'The grey cloth'. 

Johannes Itten

Johannes Itten Colour Sphere

Circa 1964

Johannes Itten (1888 - 1967) was an influential colour theorist and teacher, posted at the Weimar Bauhaus between 1919 and 1922. Inspired by the ideas of Friedrich Fröbel and his exposure to psychoanalysis, Itten adopted techniques such as undertaking gymnastic exercises in order to prepare and relax for a class. He also refused to correct students on individual basis for fear of stifling their creative impulse, instead preferring to address general errors on a class-wide basis. Itten left the Bauhaus in 1923 after a rift grew between him and founder Walter Gropius over Itten's introverted spiritualism against the industrialism of the latter.

 His treatise The Art of Colour, published in 1960, remains influential today; to artists, designers and also the cosmetics industry where his concept of 'seasonal colour' is still employed. Analysing colour in terms of subjective feelings against objective clour, Itten strove to explore the problems of the visual, emotional and symbolic natures of colour.

Itten once stated: "Colour is life, for a world without colour seems dead. As a flame produces light, light produces colour. As intonation lends colour to the spoken word, colour lends spiritually realized sound to form."