gerrit thomas rietveld

Born in Utrecht on 24 June 1888, Thomas Gerrit Rietveld began his artistic practice in the aftermath of World War One. The war had ended over 40 million lives, and the trauma of modern warfare shattered previous cultural and artistic conventions. Subsequently the post war period saw an explosion of new, often modernist, art forms that tried to capture a new reality.

In the Netherlands a new art philosophy emerged - the De Stijl movement - based on the teachings of M. H. J Schoenmaekers. The De Stijl philosophy – or ‘the style’ in Dutch – was a spiritual movement which aimed to find redemption by rejecting the perceived deception of the natural world, aiming to access a deeper, more fundamental meaning and ‘spiritual harmony’. More than an aesthetic pursuit, it rejected the pre-war focus on individualism and the decorative excesses of the Art Deco period, instead focusing on a simplified and universal visual language appropriate for a modern era.

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld (alongside Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesbur) is considered one the key contributors to this movement. In rejecting naturalistic representation of the world, and instead stripping down to an abstract and geometric style, they believed they could achieve a balance and order that reflected a new, universal consciousness. Within the De Stijl movement only three elements are used – horizontal and vertical lines, three primary colours, and three primary shades of black grey and white.

Rietveld soon became one of the most distinguished interpreters of the De Stijl message. Using his unique skills as both an artist and craftsmen, Rietveld began re-inventing chairs and other furniture as if no one had ever built them before. Among his most important furniture design works that perfectly reflec the De Stijl philosophy are the “Red and Blue” (1918), the “Zig-Zag” (1934), the “Schröder 1” (1923), the “Utrecht” (1935)