Gerrit Rietveld

Gerrit Rietveld was one of the most important designers of the Dutch De Stijl movement. With his radically reduced furniture and his clear, constructive architecture, he created a modern design language that is still effective today – bold, precise and uncompromising.

Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964) became known above all for his Red-Blue Chair – a piece of furniture that was not only functional, but also a manifest spatial concept. Reduced to basic geometric shapes and primary colors, it exemplifies the ideas of De Stijl: order, clarity, abstraction. Rietveld also pursued this approach in architecture – most clearly in the Rietveld Schröder House (1924), which impresses with its movable walls, clear lines and flexible spaces. Rietveld wanted to remove boundaries from design – furniture, space and architecture became a well thought-out, open system.