Children's Portraits 1922

Johannes Itten’s ‘Children's Portraits’, uses traditional materials of oil paint, likely applied onto a canvas. Itten, who taught at the Bauhaus, evokes childhood through the colors and geometry of building blocks and toys, but his technique is intriguing. While the scene is rendered in a deliberately naive style, the paint application itself seems quite painstaking. Consider the wallpaper, for example, which has a carefully mottled texture, creating a sense of aged materiality. Even more significantly, the child’s garments are adorned with bands of tiny brushstrokes, suggesting individual threads. This meticulousness might seem odd, given the subject, but it speaks to a deep commitment to craft within the expanded field of fine art. Itten asks us to consider the value of skilled labor, even while representing children's play. This raises a fascinating question: is he celebrating the innate creativity of children, or quietly critiquing the industrial system that separates us from the pleasure of making?