Partha Mitter: The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922—1947 (2007)

“This richly illustrated book explores the contested history of art and nationalism in the tumultuous last decades of British rule in India. Western avant-garde art inspired a powerful weapon of resistance among India’s artists in their struggle against colonial repression, and it is this complex interplay of Western modernism and Indian nationalism that is the core of this book.

The Triumph of Modernism takes the surprisingly unremarked Bauhaus exhibition in Calcutta in 1922 as marking the arrival of European modernism in India. In four broad sections Partha Mitter examines the decline of ‘oriental art’ and the rise of naturalism as well as that of modernism in the 1920s, and the relationship between primitivism and modernism in Indian art: with Mahatma Gandhi inspiring the Indian elite to discover the peasant, the people of the soil became portrayed by artists as ‘noble savages’. A distinct feminine voice also evolved through the rise of female artists. Finally, the author probes the ambivalent relationship between Indian nationalism and imperial patronage of the arts.

With a fascinating array of art works, few of which have either been seen or published in the West, The Triumph of Modernism throws much light on a previously neglected strand of modern art and introduces the work of artists who are little known in Europe or America. A book that challenges the dominance of Western modernism, it will be illuminating not just to students and scholars of modernism and Indian art, but to a wide international audience that admires India’s culture and history.”

Publisher Reaktion Books, 2007
ISBN 1861893183, 9781861893185
271 pages

Publisher

PDF

Johannes Itten: The Art of Color (1961-) [EN, FR, SC, ES, HU, RU]

First published in German as Kunst der Farbe: Studienausgabe by Johannes Itten, Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg, 1961.

The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color
Translated by Ernst van Hagen
Publisher Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1961
Reprint John Wiley & Sons, 1974
ISBN 0471289280
155 pages
via lexnova

The Elements of Color: A Treatise on the Color System of Johannes Itten Based on His Book The Art of Color
A simplified and condensed version of The Art of Color
Edited and With a Foreword and Evaluation by Faber Birren
Translated by Ernst van Hagen
Publisher Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1970
ISBN 0442240384
95 pages

Commentary

The Art of Color (English, trans. Ernst van Hagen, 1961/1974, no images, MOBI, 6 MB)
The Elements of Color (English, trans. Ernst van Hagen, 1970, no OCR)
Art de la couleur (French, trans. Sylvie Girard, 1971, 44 MB, added on 2015-9-5)
Umetnost boje: subjektivni doživljaj i objektivna spoznaja (Serbo-Croatian, trans. Emilija Pavković and Vencislav Radovanović, 1973, 26 MB, added on 2015-9-5)
El arte del color (Spanish, trans. Vidal Lamíquiz, 1975, 5 MB)
A színek művészete (Hungarian, trans. Karátson Gábor, 1978/1997, 52 MB, added on 2015-9-5)
Iskusstvo tsveta (Russian, 2000, 75 MB, added on 2015-9-5)

Paul Klee: On Modern Art (1945–) [DE, EN, TR]

“Paul Klee’s short treatise on modern art was prepared as the basis for a lecture which he delivered at the opening of an exhibition at the Museum in Jena on 26 January 1924. Some of his own work was included in this exhibition. He had already at the time been teaching for four years at the Bauhaus, and these notes are the product of his deep meditation upon the problems of art which the task of teaching had brought to a head. In my own opinion they constitute the most profound and illuminating statement of the aesthetic basis of the modern movement in art ever made by a practising artist. Other artists–Matisse, Picasso, Moore–have given brilliant explanations of their aims, subtle revelations of their methods and meaning. But Klee is unique in the logical consistency of his exposition. He was of a metaphysical cast of mind and widely read in philosophy and science, and proficient in still another art than his own–in music. All this gave him a wide range of reference and illustration.” (from the Introduction)

Publisher Bern-Bümpliz, Benteli, 1945
53 pages

English edition
With an Introduction by Herbert Read
Translated by Paul Findlay
Publisher Faber and Faber, London, 1948
56 pages

Über die moderne Kunst (German, 1945, 56 MB, no OCR, added on 2015-2-4, via DNB)
On Modern Art (English, trans. Paul Findlay, 1948, no OCR)
Modern Sanat Üzerine (Turkish, trans. Rahmi G. Öğdül, 1995/2007)