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Gerrit RietveldBy Owen Flynn
Life
Gerrit Rietveld was a furniture designer and architect of some repute during the twentieth century
He is most famous for his Red and Blue chair and the Schroder house in Utrecht
Red blue chair
Schroder house
Life and education
Born in utrecht in 1888
Age 12 apprenticed as a cabinet maker
From 1904 to 1908 studied the art of drawing and
ornamentation
1917 Opened his own workshop
Began making bespoke furniture for clients
Made for H.G.Shellinga dutch railway engineer
In 1906 he attended a series of lectures by the architect P. J. C. Klaarhamer
Klaarhamer shared a workshop with Bart van der Leck
Bart van der Leck was one of the founding members of the “De Stijl” journal
Influences
Avant Garde Idealists
De Stijl
Socialism
De Stijl
Founded by Theo van Doesburg Bart van der Leck Piet Mondrian J.J.P Oud Vilmos Huszar
De Stijl
Ultimate simplicity and abstraction, both in architecture and painting, by using only straight horizontal and vertical lines and rectangular forms. Furthermore, formal vocabulary is limited to the primary colours, red, blue and yellow, and the three primary values of black, white and grey. Work must avoid symmetry. Aesthetic balance is attained by opposition
Evolution
Around 1923/4 he was commissioned by Truss Schroder to build a house for her and her family. This is widely considered his finest work
It was after the Schroder house that he decided to become a full time architect. Although he did continue to design furniture for buildings for which he was commissioned
Examples of furniture
Style
Gerrit Rietvelds convictions that beautiful functional furniture should be made available to the masses were what inspired many of his designs
Not to enclose space....to leave the space uninterrupted
His work takes symmetrical space and makes it asymmetrical, this gives the appearance of blurred space no matter which direction you look at it
His furniture was generally made form cheaper timber such as pine and plywood and finished with paint
Legacy
His work was the start of what is now modern cabinet making
He took modern techniques and ideas and applied them to the furniture he designed
The idea to mass produce cheap furniture was way ahead of Ingvar Feodor Kamprad
His designs and influences can be seen everywhere, in modern architecture, furniture designers of the sixties and seventies and beyond
