Simultaneous Contrast (1927)

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The Bauhaus influenced Japanese graphic design around the early 1900s. The first Japanese student at the Bauhaus was the painter Takehiko Mizutani, and created this piece in 1927 at a preliminary course taught by Josef Albers and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. 

Pieces like this showed that students from other countries were going to Germany to experience and learn Bauhaus techniques to bring back such as clean forms, geometric shapes, and primary colors (yellow and blue). Other projects show that students in Tokyo were combining Bauhaus principles with a mixture of other modernist styles such as constructivist and other socially progressive ideas. 

 

Mizutani's study in class of Josef Albers
Source: www.are.na
Mizutani's study in class of Josef Albers