GR-RED AND BLUE CHAIR

GR-RED AND BLUE CHAIR

Gerrit Rietveld designed the “Red and Blue” chair in 1917 and coloured it in 1923. A frame of thin rods, with no visible joinery, carries two flat planes for the seat and the backrest. The rods form an open grid of lines rather than a closed volume. As a result, the chair became one of the first designs to emerge from the De Stijl movement. Rietveld sought simplicity and standardisation. He hoped that parts could eventually be executed instead of handcrafted individually. In fact, he treated the chair as an exercise in the same vertical and horizontal planes he used in architecture. His craftsman, Gerard van de Groenekan, made this example under Rietveld’s supervision in De Bilt, Netherlands, before 1951. It retains its original paint, and nobody has ever repainted it, which makes it one of very few surviving in this condition. Moreover, Rietveld made some of the first chairs for the Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht. He designed that UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1924, and it is still one of the best-known examples of De Stijl architecture.

Dimensions:

86 x 66 x 78 cm / 34 x 26 x 31 in

Materials:

Painted wood, aluminium

Literature:

1. Peter Vöge, The Complete Rietveld Furniture (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1993), pp. 58–59.
2. Marijke Küper and Ida van Zijl, Gerrit Th. Rietveld 1888–1964: The Complete Works (Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 1992), pp. 74–76.

Terms:

Certificate of Authenticity included
Worldwide shipping available
14-day return policy

Enquiries:

on request