Rudolf Arnheim (; July 15, 1904 – June 9, 2007) was a German-born writer, art and film theorist, and perceptual psychologist. He learned Gestalt psychology from studying under Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler at the University of Berlin and applied it to art.
His magnum opus was his book Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (1954). Other major books by Arnheim have included Visual Thinking (1969), and The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts (1982). Art and Visual Perception was revised, enlarged and published as a new version in 1974, and it has been translated into fourteen languages. He lived in Germany, Italy, England, and the U.S., where he taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Harvard University, and the University of Michigan. Not long after he was born, his family moved to Kaiserdamm in Charlottenburg, where they stayed until the early 1930s. His father, Georg Arnheim, owned a small piano factory, and Georg Arnheim's plan for his son was for him to take over the factory. However, Rudolf wanted to continue his education, so his father agreed that he could spend half his week at the university and the other half at the factory.
Works
Although Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye took fifteen months to complete, he felt that he essentially wrote it in one long sitting.