1888 Utrecht
1964 Utrecht

The Dutch designer, architect, and painter Gerrit Rietveld was born in Utrecht in 1888. Until he was fifteen years old, he worked in his father's carpentry workshop. Gerrit Rietveld worked as a draftsman in the workshop of the goldsmith C.J.A. until 1913 while at the same time attending evening courses and learning technical drawing from the architect P.J.C. Klaarhamer. In 1911/12 Gerrit Rietveld belonged to Kunstliefde, a group of Utrecht artists. By 1917 Gerrit Rietveld had established a furniture-making workshop in Utrecht. In 1919 Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld, and others founded De Stijl, a group of artists that formulated a language of forms aiming at the highest degree of objectivity and autonomy in the work of art. De Stijl works are austerely non-representational, radically reduced to a geometric arrangement of horizontals and verticals and the primary colors red, yellow, and blue, plus black and white. De Stijl applied these principles to both two-dimensional art such as painting and three-dimensional fields such as furniture design and architecture. Gerrit Rietveld became one of the most important and influential members of De Stijl. In 1919 Gerrit Rietveld designed the prototype of that perennial favorite, the "Red and Blue" chair. The "Red and Blue" chair is made of straight boards and battens; it was not given its striking coat of characteristic De Stijl lacquer until 1923. The seat is blue, the back red, and the edges of the frame battens are lacquered yellow while the battens themselves are black. The "Red and Blue" chair was featured in the journal "De Stijl" and was also shown at a Bauhaus exhibition. In 1924/25 Gerrit Rietveld designed the "Schröder House" in Utrecht for Truus Schröder in Utrecht, a building that is generally regarded as the architectural manifesto of the De Stijl movement. The color scheme and the division and arrangement of wall surfaces in this private house on two floors perfectly express the De Stijl principles of design. In 1922 Gerrit Rietveld designed a minimalist, functional ceiling lamp for the practice of Dr. Hartog in Maarssen he was decorating; it consisted of three white soffits arranged at right angles. From 1932 until 1934 Gerrit Rietveld designed the "Zig-Zag" chair. In 1928 Gerrit Rietveld became a member of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). As an architect, Gerrit Rietveld designed numerous buildings and interiors. His biggest architectural project, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, was not completed until nine years after his death in 1964.