Gerrit Rietveld

Rietveld was a dutch designer, architect, and painter. He believed that De Stijl created a language of forms that could be used in a universal way. From those forms, he believed that one could achieve objectivity by being non-representational. With his love of design and de stijl movement, Rietveld created a prototype for a chair using red, black, yellow, and blue. The chair consisted of boards and pieces of wood that were then painted with the signature De Stijl colours. The piece was new way of looking at the creation of both furniture and art. Through the abstract reduction ist style, Rietveld could transform a mundane object into a piece of art who’s purpose was to try and inform the world of a new utopia. It is debated that Rietveld only realised the chair was a piece of art when he called it a spatial creation. By doing this he was starting that the object was no longer just a chair but it was sculpture that inhabited the space around it. In 1924, he began designing the Schroder House. The Schroder House followed the principles of the De Stijl movement and would soon be recognised as being an architectural representation of the movement. In 1932 he started designing the Zig Zag chair which consisted of four boards that were fitted together at different angles.

In my opinion, I think that Rietveld's work is a look into another side of the De Stijl movement that wasn’t explored as much by the founding artists. By using architecture and design, Rietveld was widening the audience for De Stijl and bringing its views into the society outside the art community. I think the way that he transferred the concepts of the De stijl movement into sculpture was interesting. He bought the 2D elements from the pieces and gave them life in a 3D while still giving the illusion of little depth when viewed through photographs. This is something I would like to explore in my own project. I could take some of the elements from my own drawings and painting and try to interpret them in a 3D format.