'Red and Blue' armchair after a 1918 design by Gerrit Rietveld,

Notes

In the Red Blue Chair, Rietveld manipulated rectilinear volumes and examined the interaction of vertical and horizontal planes in much the same way as he did in his architecture.

Although the chair was originally designed in 1918, its colour scheme of primary colours- red, yellow, blue and black was only applied around 1923. Hoping that much of his furniture would eventually be mass-produced rather than handcrafted, Rietveld aimed for simplicity in construction. The pieces of wood that compose the Red Blue Chair are in the standard lumber sizes that were readily available at the time.

Rietveld believed that there was a greater goal for the furniture designer than just physical comfort: the well-being and comfort of the spirit. Rietveld and his de Stijl colleagues, including the movement’s most famous theorist and practitioner, Piet Mondrian, sought to create a utopia based on a harmonic human-made order, which they believed could renew Europe after the devastating turmoil of World War I.

Provenance

Innovation Furniture, Cape Town retailer of licensed Cassina and other leading European manufacturers