Gerrit Rietveld

 

Gerrit Reitveld was born on the 24th of June 1888 and died on the 26th of June 1964. He was a Dutch furniture designer and architect.
He was also one of the principal members of the Dutch artistic movement called De Stijl. Famous for his Red and Blue Chair and for the Rietveld House, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Rietveld designed his famous Red and Blue Chair in 1917. Hoping that much of his furniture would eventually be mass-produced rather than handcrafted, Rietveld aimed for simplicity in construction. In 1918, he started his own furniture factory, and changed the chair's colours after becoming influenced by the 'De Stijl' movement, of which he became a member in 1919, the same year in which he became an architect. The contacts that he made at De Stijl gave him the opportunity to exhibit abroad as well. In 1923, Walter Gropius invited Rietveld to exhibit at the Bauhaus. 

He designed his first building, the Rietveld Schröder House, in close collaboration with the owner Truus Schroder-Schrader. Built in Utrecht on the Prins Hendriklaan 50, the house has a conventional ground floor, but is radical on the top floor, lacking fixed walls but instead relying on sliding walls to create and change living spaces. The design seems like a three-dimensional realization of a Mondrian painting.

Gerrit Reitveld was a proponent of the “De Stijl” Movement, which supported simplicity and abstraction.

In his work he uses straight lines, planes and asymmetry and the use of glass and steel in all of his buildings and thus, the use of light was prominent.