Colour

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Explanation

The first illustration is a reproduction of a diagram by Itten showing his colour star, a 2-D representation of the colour sphere. The second illustration purports to be a translation of Itten’s diagram into English. But there’s a problem…

The colour names in the translation have been rearranged in a way that distorts some significant information. For example, red is made to appear to be the complementary of green.   In the original version this was not the case—zinnober (vermilion) is shown as complementary to cyanblau (cyan) , not grün (green). In other words the diagram has been reworked to correspond to a misleading and currently fashionable colour circle instead of the original diagram.

Technical notes

• Itten’s colours   do not correspond with those used in these notes, but they are significantly closer to practical reality than the mistranslated version that is currently fashionable in art school colour theory.
• The colours in the illustration show here   cannot be an accurate representation of the original colours. Inaccuracies began when the paint colours were reproduced in a book²; the colours in the book would have begun to fade after more than 30 years of use in the art school library; the colours in my digital scan were certainly not carefully controlled; the colours in the scan will not be accurately displayed on your computer monitor unless it’s been carefully colour managed. In spite of all that, the colours shown here are a better indication of the original colours than the words used in the mistranslated diagram¹.