Gerrit Rietveld

The Dutch designer, architect and cabinetmaker Gerrit Thomas Rietveld was born in Utrecht in 1888.
In 1911, Gerrit RIETVELD started his own furniture company while still an architecture student.
In 1918, he designed the Red and Blue Chair, under the influence of the De Stijl movement, which he joined in 1919.
It was there that he met Piet Mondrian, among others.
In 1924 he built the Schröder House in Utrecht for Truus Schröder-Schräder, with whom he collaborated.
The house, although obeying radically geometrical forms, is characterised by a strong asymmetry.
In the 1920s, Gerrit RIETVELD created several pieces of furniture based on the principle of interweaving surfaces: the high chair, the military chair, the Berlin chair, the coffee table, the sideboard…
Gerrit RIETVELD left the De Stijl movement in 1928 and became interested in the Nieuwe Zakelijkheid (New Objectivity).
In 1932 he began designing the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and designed his famous Zig Zag chair, which he would later adapt in different forms in the 1930s and 1940s.
Gerrit RIETVELD was one of the first to take an interest in the industrial production of furniture and to make products out of steel tubes.
From the 1950s onwards, he designed several architectural projects: the Stoop House (1951), the Sonsbeek architectural pavilion (1954) and the Ploeg textile factory (1956).