I don’t know how the Bauhaus had ended up here; it didn’t really make sense that it would choose as its home such a conservative place. Still, we were far enough from its centre to be mostly ignorable. The school was in a yellow Jugendstil building with neither a ribbon nor cherub about it. Mostly the Bauhaus was made up of gridded windows just above eye level, so that you could only see the top of everyone’s head, and you had to divine who it was from their haircut alone.

That winter, we were all Master Itten’s. We had nothing to do with any other staff: we were his to be confected. Our lessons took place in the big ateliers, and it was where we investigated the nature of our materials. The Master was always challenging us to see more intensively: he was obsessed with the purification of vision. ‘The world is only replica until it is truly seen,’ he’d say, as he padded around the workshop barefoot. ‘Pain will only make you see more beauty.’

I was still waiting to understand what this meant; Charlotte and the others had a quicker grasp of all this. At home in Dresden I had been lauded by all my teachers for my painterly skill, and it was confusing not to be picked out as especially talented. But that, I suppose, was why I had come. Or at least, that’s what I told myself.

As a teacher, Itten’s composure was occasionally interrupted by strong emotions. One time, for example, we were asked to paint our impression of the Somme. Max, who had been there, drew exhausted men with bayonets. But Willem, who had been nowhere near France, punctured his paper with his pencil six times. The Master had preferred Willem’s, and hadn’t even really looked at poor Max’s figurative display.

Lessons from the lemon continued. We tasted glass with our tongues; arranged textures of leather, furs and cans; scratched each other with steel wool; smelt the difference between lumber shavings and polished driftwood. Only in the last part of the day would we get to drawing. And when we did, we drew standing up, holding our breath, to music, after meditation, with the left hand, with the right, and, our breath puffing in the freezing school, after gymnastics. Just to see what might come out of it.