Seven color contrasts

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The color wheel by Johannes Itten (1961)

The Swiss painter, art theorist and art educator Johannes Itten (1888–1967) examined the effect of contrasting colors and developed seven color contrasts that differ significantly in their character. Each of these contrasts has its own unique effect.

A color contrast is always created by juxtaposing two or more high-contrast colors. Contrasting colors usually create a certain tension. We associate it with activity, strength, joie de vivre, but also with drama, aggression, harshness or loud volume. On the other hand, the same colors lying next to one another appear rather simple, calm or monotonous and similar colors usually create a harmonious, gentle or melancholy impression.

The following sections also contain information on the individual color contrasts that go beyond Itten's theoretical concept.

The color-in-itself contrast

The simplest, strongest and most important color-in-itself contrast is formed by the three primary colors (magenta) red, yellow and (cyan) blue, usually supplemented by green
Franz Marc : Blauschwarzer Fuchs, 1911 The animal is captured (characterized) by the contrasts of the almost pure bright colors.
Strong color contrasts in a photo.

The color-in-itself contrast (also color-to-color contrast, color contrast or hue contrast) occurs as soon as at least three pure, bright colors that are relatively far apart in the color wheel meet. The simplest, strongest and most important contrast are the three primary colors (magenta) red, yellow and (cyan) blue, usually supplemented by green. The color-in-itself contrast is generally colorful, decisive, happy, powerful and loud, and often also festive.

Since it is a very noticeable color contrast, it is particularly used on signal boards, flags and warning signs. The color-in-itself contrast can also be found in medieval book illumination and also in modern painters such as Henri Matisse , Jean Miró , Franz Marc or Wassily Kandinsky .

Light-dark contrast

The simplest, strongest and most important light-dark contrast are the achromatic colors black and white
Francisco de Goya : Portrait of Tiburcio Pérez y Cuervo, 1820. - The strong light-dark contrast creates an extremely three-dimensional impression and focuses the representation on the face and posture of the person portrayed.
Light-dark contrast: fork on a dinner plate in hard, directed sunlight.

The light-dark contrast (also black-white contrast, tonal value contrast, lightness contrast or chiaroscuro) occurs when light and dark colors are next to each other. The contrast can be created by mixing colors with black and white. But the different natural lightness of the colors also plays a role, such as B. in yellow and purple. The simplest, strongest and most important contrast are the achromatic colors black and white (pure non-colors). The light-dark contrast can be dramatic, threatening, but also cool, thoughtful, melancholic or mystical. In addition, a strong contrast in brightness with the help of light and shadow can create plasticity (spatiality, physicality, three-dimensionality), since light colors tend to move forward and dark colors tend to take a back seat.

Painters in whom the light-dark contrast plays a special role include Luca Cambiaso , Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio , Georges de la Tour , Rembrandt van Rijn and Francisco de Goya . In the case of drawings (pen and charcoal drawings) and prints (woodcuts, etchings), the light-dark contrast naturally plays an important role, since they are primarily designed with black. The black and white films of the 20s and 30s achieve bold effects with artificial lighting.

Complementary contrast

The simplest, strongest and most important complementary contrast are the colors red and green.
Gauguin : In den Wellen (Undine), 1889. There is a strong contrast effect by limiting the two complementary colors red and green.
Atsuko Kato: Drachenflug am Ginkgoberg, 1990. The red-brown Ginkgoberg in front of the light blue sky forms a clear cold-warm contrast.
Complementary contrast: field of poppies

The complementary contrast arises when two complementary colors are next to each other. These are opposite in the color wheel, such as B. Violet and Yellow. In a way, complementary colors behave very oddly. If they are next to each other, they increase each other to the highest luminosity. If you mix them, they destroy each other to a neutral, cloudy, broken gray. A so-called “colored gray” is created. Equiluminance occurs when the adjacent complementary colors are equally bright. The simplest, strongest and most important contrast is formed by the complementary pair of magenta red and green, as both are equally bright and do not form an extreme cold-warm contrast like blue-green and red-orange.

The complementary contrast usually appears active, powerful and bright, but it can also appear aggressive and intrusive. A particularly impressive contrast is the blue-yellow contrast , which can be very harmonious but also exciting.

Jan van Eyck , the Gothic painter, used the complementary contrast. But expressionism artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner or Erich Heckel used this contrast in a particularly extreme way .

Cold-warm contrast

A (light) blue-green next to a red-orange form the simplest, strongest and most important cold-warm contrast.
Paul Cézanne : The Bay of Marseille, seen from L'Estaque, around 1885. - The houses appear particularly friendly due to the contrast between the warm colors used for them and the cool blue of the sea and sky. They also show a (moderate) cold-warm contrast in the separation of light and shadow, which makes them appear three-dimensional (together with the light-dark contrast).
Cold-warm contrast: the undersides of the orange-colored, drying fish appear warm compared to the cold light blue of the sky.

With the cold-warm contrast (also near-far contrast), cold colors are next to warm colors. Based on general experience, the sun (yellow) and fire (red) are warm, the clear water (blue) cool and the glacial ice (light blue-green) or snow (white) cold. As the name near-far contrast suggests, cold-warm contrast can be used to create spatiality, as warm colors tend to move forward compared to cold ones ( color perspective ). In addition, experience shows that the greater the distance between things and the viewer, the more bluish and lighter the colors appear, i.e. colder ( aerial perspective ). The simplest, strongest and most important cold-warm contrast are the colors blue-green and red-orange. Johannes Itten deliberately does not name a light blue-green as the coldest color, since the cold-warm contrast only comes into its own when there are no light-dark differences.

The cold-warm contrast can appear soulful, sonorous, but also indecisive and unreal. It is usually associated with opposing effects such as shady - sunny, calming - exciting, airy - earthy, distant - close or damp - dry.

In landscape painting z. In the case of Albrecht Altdorfer or Caspar David Friedrich , for example , the cold-warm contrast is very important to suggest spatial depth. The artists Paul Cezanne , Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir use the cold-warm contrast to depict shady and sunny areas.

Quality contrast

The simplest, strongest and most important quality contrast is e.g. B. the pure, bright color red next to an equally light gray.
Paul Klee : Neue Harmonie, 1936, oil on canvas, 93.6 × 66.3 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, abstract art. The picture consists of 42 rectangles placed next to each other like a grid. In the middle area, Klee uses a clear quality contrast by placing bright red color fields next to cloudy colors and gray. The red rectangles appear particularly active and prominent. Klee calms the vibrancy of the red shade through a variety of gradations in the edge area that merge into earth tones.
Quality contrast: two-wheeled covers in front of a house. The blue and red appear particularly bright next to the dull gray of the surroundings.

The quality contrast (also intensity contrast or colored-to-achromatic contrast) arises when pure, bright, bright colors are next to cloudy, broken, dull colors. The contrast is created by differences in color quality or color intensity.

The clouded colors include not only the colors broken with gray or the complementary color, but also those mixed with black or white. If you confront a pure color with a gray, lightened white or darkened black, the cloudy colors increase the luminosity of the bright color. In addition, the quality contrast can be used to create spatiality, since bright colors tend to move forward compared to cloudy ones.

The simplest, strongest and most important quality contrast is a pure color, for example red, next to an equally light gray.

The quality contrast can have a calm, calm and soothing effect, but it can also be upsetting and depressive. In either case, the luminous part is highlighted.

In medieval glass painting, the colors appear particularly bright thanks to the dark lead frames. Even Georges Rouault and Max Beckmann achieve higher brightness by heavy black borders colors. Other artists who use the quality contrast are Georges de la Tour , Henri Matisse and Paul Klee .

Quantity contrast

Van-Gogh : Starry Night over the Rhône, 1888. - The cool and dark midnight blue dominates the area. But the light yellow, no matter how sparingly it was used, forms a strong opposite pole, which is why the image does not appear gloomy.
An important quantity contrast is formed by a small, purple area on a large, yellow area.
Quantity contrast: the far away golfer appears small compared to the large area of ​​the meadow.

The quantity contrast (also size contrast, proportion contrast or quantity contrast) is actually a form contrast. It is created by juxtaposing many and few or large and small areas. The opposites large - small, long - short, wide - narrow or thick - thin also form a quantity contrast.

Complementary color pairs form balanced proportions in terms of luminosity: yellow: violet 1: 3, orange: blue 1: 2 and red: green 1: 1.

With the quantity contrast, it should be noted that colors have different intensities. Yellow has a particularly high luminosity and violet a relatively low one. Johannes Itten writes that the effect of the colors is the same when they are present in certain proportions: yellow and violet in a ratio of 1: 3, orange and blue in a ratio of 1: 2, red and green in a ratio of 1: 1. These quantities have a balanced, calming, harmonious effect. Conversely, a small, purple area in a large, yellow one forms the simplest, strongest and most important quantity contrast.

Overall, the quantity contrast creates disharmony, restlessness and tension. The smaller form can appear vulnerable and reserved, but also lonely and lost.

Most of the artists use the quantity contrast in some of their paintings. The small oranges on the chest of drawers under the window in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini wedding (1434) create a clear contrast to the other objects. In Francisco de Goya's Portrait of Tiburcio Pérez y Cuervo (1820), the arms and head of the man only take up a small part of the otherwise black picture. In Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhône (1888) , the pair at the bottom right of the picture contrasts in size with the rest of the picture.

Simultaneous contrast

The simultaneous contrast: the same red appears in an orange environment with a bluish tinge and particularly bright in a green environment.
Georges Seurat (1859–1891), A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte), 1884–1886, oil on canvas, 207.6 × 308 cm, Art Institute of Chicago. - Seurat represents the simultaneous contrast by suddenly painting the beige tree trunk in front of the blue water in orange or the dotted frame next to the green meadow in red and next to the orange sand in blue.

Simultaneous contrast describes the simultaneous (simultaneous) interaction of adjacent colored areas. The sense of sight automatically creates the complementary color in the vicinity of a color . Colors perceived in this way are referred to as induced colors. The same red, for example, appears bluish in an orange environment and is particularly bright in a green environment.

As Itten explains, this illusionary character of perception causes the viewer to become excited. The stability of the opposing colors is dissolved, they come into changeable vibrations and shine in new effects.

The pointillist painter Georges Seurat depicts the color-changing effect directly. He suddenly paints an otherwise brown tree trunk in front of light blue water. With his monochrome squares, the artist Josef Albers draws attention to the effect of the simultaneous contrast in the edge area.

Successive contrast

The successive contrast is not included in Itten's system. This is the phenomenon that when looking at a color , the eye gradually (successively) creates an afterimage of this in the complementary color on the retina, which appears either after a picture change on an external background or after closing the eyes. One explanation for this after-effect is that if the photoreceptor cells are irritated for a longer period of time, the functional substances become fatigued, a purely physiological process. However, it takes a lot of effort to focus the eye so rigidly on a color surface. This contrast hardly ever occurs in everyday use of color or when looking at works of art. That is why this contrast is explicitly missing in Itten's system. He merely refers to this in his remarks on simultaneous contrast. He proposed that both contrasts probably have the same cause.

For example, if you look at a red circle for a while and then look at a white surface, the impression of a weak green circle appears there, which appears to be on the background surface. In the red - green system of the relevant retinal region, the color green (used up by red) dominates for a certain time and in this way creates a green circle that objectively does not exist. A similar effect can be observed if one looks for a while with closed lids at a strongly glowing lamp.

A special variant of the successive contrast is the McCollough effect . This refers to the phenomenon that after intensive observation of two differently colored images with vertical and horizontal stripes each in an image with vertically and horizontally arranged black stripes, these receive the complementary color of the color image corresponding to their orientation. Due to the long duration, the McCollough effect should be induced with caution.

literature

  • Faber Birren (Ed.): ME Chevreul: The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York 1981, ISBN 0-442-21212-7 .
  • Johannes Itten : Art of Color. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1961. (New edition: Urania Verlag, Freiburg, 2003, ISBN 3-332-01470-6 ).
  • Günther Kebeck: Perception - Theories, Methods, and Research Results in Perception Psychology . Juventa Verlag, Weinheim / Munich 1994, ISBN 3-7799-0316-4 .
  • Harald Küppers : Theory of harmony in colors. DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-7701-2192-9 .
  • Jörg Michael Matthaei: Basic questions of graphic design. 1st edition. Heinz Moos Verlag, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7879-0081-0 .
  • Egon von Vietinghoff : Handbook for the technique of painting. DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1983 and 1991, ISBN 3-7701-1519-8 .
  • Ernst A. Weber: Seeing, designing and photographing. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel et al. 1990, ISBN 3-7643-2469-4 .
  • Friederike Wiegand: The art of seeing. A guide to image viewing . 2nd Edition. Daedalus Verlag, Münster 2019, ISBN 978-3-89126-283-2 , pp. 84–86.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Franz Marc wrote in a letter dated December 12, 1910 about his color theory to August Macke: “Blue is the male principle, bitter and spiritual. Yellow is the feminine principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is the matter, brutal and heavy and always the color that the other two must fight and overcome! "
  2. ↑ Jörg Michael Matthaei: Basic questions of graphic design . 1st edition. Heinz Moos Verlag, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7879-0081-0 , p. 144 .
  3. ↑ Johannes Itten: Art of Color - Study Edition . 8th edition. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1970, ISBN 3-473-61551-X , p. 50 .
  4. ^ Jörg Michael Matthaei: Graphic Design . 1st edition. Heinz Moos Verlag, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7879-0081-0 , p. 145 .
  5. ↑ Johannes Itten: Art of Color . 8th edition. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1970, ISBN 3-473-61551-X , p. 48 .
  6. ↑ Itten 1961, p. 45.
  7. ^ Jörg Michael Matthaei: Graphic Design . 1st edition. Heinz Moos Verlag, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7879-0081-0 , p. 144 .
  8. ↑ Johannes Itten: Art of Color. Subjective experience and objective recognition as ways to art . 4th edition. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1961, p. 104 .
  9. ↑ According to Johannes Itten, the balanced proportions are based on a statement by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This "primary source" from Goethe could not be found in his color theory. Arthur Schopenhauer, on the other hand, names concrete proportions in his color theory (In: Rudolf Steiner (Hrsg.?): Arthur Schopenhauer's complete works in twelve volumes . Twelfth volume. Color theory. From the estate. JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachhaben, Stuttgart and Berlin approx. 1920 ?, P. 43.)
  10. ↑ Johannes Itten: Art of Color - Study Edition . 8th edition. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1970, ISBN 3-473-61551-X , p. 52 .
  11. ^ Teacher training server of the State Academy for Further Education and Personnel Development in Schools, Baden-Württemberg
  12. ^ Jörg Michael Matthaei: Graphic Design . 1st edition. Heinz Moos Verlag, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7879-0081-0 , p. 142 .
  13. ↑ Johannes Itten: Art of Color . 8th edition. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1970, ISBN 3-473-61551-X , p. 52 .
  14. ^ PD Jones, DH Holding: Extremely long-term persistence of the McCollough effect. In: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance. Volume 1, Number 4, November 1975, pp. 323-327, PMID 1185119 .