Rietveld and his colleagues in the de Stijl art and architecture movement 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. New forms, in their view, were essential to this rebuilding. from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 86 Licensing of MoMA images and videos is handled by Art Resource (North America) and Scala Archives (all other geographic locations). All requests should be addressed directly to those agencies, which supply high-resolution digital image files provided to them directly by the Museum. This record is a work in progress. The Red and Blue Chair is a chair designed in 1917 by Gerrit Rietveld. It represents one of the first explorations by the De Stijl art movement in three dimensions. The original chair was constructed of unstained beech wood and was not painted until the early 1920s.
[1] Fellow member of De Stijl and architect, Bart van der Leck, saw his original model and suggested that he add bright colours.[2] He built the new model of thinner wood and painted it entirely black with areas of primary colors attributed to De Stijl movement. The effect of this color scheme made the chair seem to almost disappear against the black walls and floor of the Schröder house where it was later placed.[3] The areas of color appeared to float, giving it an almost transparent structure. The Museum of Modern Art, which houses the chair in its permanent collection, a gift from Philip Johnson, states that the red, blue,and yellow colors were added around 1923.[5] The chair also resides at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.[6] It features several Rietveld joints. The Red and Blue Chair was reported to be on loan to the Delft University of Technology Faculty of Architecture as part of an exhibition. On May 13, 2008, a fire destroyed the entire building, but the Red and Blue Chair was saved by firefighters.
As of 2012, it resides in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota[]. As of 2013, it has been moved to Auckland, New Zealand[]. ^ TU Delft fire news storyGerrit Rietveld (1888-1964), a Dutch furniture designer and architect, created his Red-Blue Chair in 1917, but the bright colours and, indeed the name by which it became known, were not adopted until several years later.Originally made in plain beech wood, the design was deliberately kept as simple as possible because Rietveld wanted it to be mass-produced rather than crafted by hand. The pieces of wood that are used are all in the standard measurements of lumber that was available at the time.Two years after making the chair, Rietveld joined the De Stijl movement and it was under the auspices of its most famous member, Piet Mondrian, that, in 1923, the chair was painted in the distinctive colours of red, yellow, blue and black. The De Stijl movement was founded in 1917 and its members believed in pure abstraction by reducing pieces to their essential forms and pure colours.
Furniture was simplified to horizontal and vertical lines and they used only the primary colours with black and white.The movement reached its apotheosis between 1923-24, when Rietveld designed a house for Dutch socialite Truus Schröder and her three children in Utrecht, Netherlands. The Rietveld Schröder House, as it became known, is the only building to have been made completely according to the De Stijl movement’s principles.Schröder, who was closely involved in the design, requested the house be made without interior walls as she wanted a connection between the inside and outside. There was an open-plan layout downstairs, while upstairs could be divided by a system of sliding and revolving panels giving almost endless permutations to the space.The Rietveld chair fitted in perfectly and appeared to float on the black floors.Schröder lived there until her death in 1985 and the house was later opened as a museum. It has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 2000 and was depicted on a euro coin issued by the Royal Dutch Mint earlier this year.
Please support our work Movements De Stijl De StijlStarted: 1917Ended: 1931 Important Art and Artists of De StijlThe below artworks are the most important in De Stijl - that both overview the major ideas of the movement, and highlight the greatest achievements by each artist in De Stijl. Don't forget to visit the artist overview pages of the artists that interest you. Artwork Images Composition A (1920)Artist: Artwork description & Analysis: Composition A - whose title announces its nonobjective nature by making no reference to anything beyond itself - is a good example of Mondrian's geometric abstraction before it fully matured within the framework of the De Stijl aesthetic. With its rectilinear forms made up of solid, outlined areas of color, the work reflects the artist's experimentation with Schoenmaekers's mathematical theory and his search for a pared-down visual language appropriate to the modern era. While here Mondrian uses blacks and shades of grey, his paintings would later be further reduced, ultimately employing more basic compositions and only solid blocks of primary colors.
Oil on canvas - The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome Artwork Images Mechano-Dancer (1922)Artist: Artwork description & Analysis: This early work employs the signature geometric shapes of the De Stijl aesthetic, yet its layering of shapes and forms, and combination of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines--along with the absence of color - reflect a different approach from that of the movement's leading artists, van Doesburg and Mondrian. The work's suggestion of a human figure - accomplished by the arrangement of geometric forms and placement of a cube at the top, possibly representing a head - is also unique in De Stijl art. Mechano-Dancer's evocation of a hybrid man-machine, also implied by its title, suggests the influence of Dada and Italian Futurism.Photomontage - Private collection, New York Artwork Images Red Blue Chair (1923)Artist: Artwork description & Analysis: Originally designed in 1918 but not fully realized until 1923, when it incorporated the characteristic De Stijl scheme of primary colors, Red Blue Chair is one of the canonical works of the movement.
Rietveld envisioned a chair that played with and transformed the space around it, consisting of rectilinear volumes, planes, and lines that interact in unique ways, yet manage to avoid intersection. Every color, line, and plane is clearly defined, as if each comprised its own work that just happened to be used for a piece of furniture. The simple assembly Rietveld deployed was quite intentional as well; he built the chair out of standard lumber sizes available at the time, reflecting his goal of realizing a piece of furniture that could be mass-produced as opposed to hand-crafted. Emphasizing its manmade quality, Red Blue Chair also notably avoids the use of natural form, which furniture designers tend to favor in order to emphasize the idea of physical comfort and convenience.Painted wood - Museum of Modern Art, New York Artwork Images Counter Composition V (1924)Artist: Artwork description & Analysis: First introduced in 1924, van Doesburg's Counter Compositions - his signature works - embody the artist's wish to move beyond the confines of De Stijl with his introduction of Elementarism.
While van Doesburg continued to make use of horizontal and vertical lines, he now prioritized the diagonal line; he described Elementarism as "based on the neutralization of positive and negative directions by the diagonal and, as far as color is concerned, by the dissonant. Equilibrated relations are not an ultimate result." The titles of his Counter Compositions refer to the fact that the lines of the compositions are at a 45-degree angle to the sides of the picture rather than parallel to them, resulting in a newly energized relationship between the composition and format of the canvas. As in the present example, he repeatedly ventured beyond the three primary colors, including a triangle of grey in addition to the primary colors, white, and black. At the time he painted this composition, De Stijl was finding its own unique voice; paintings, furniture designs, and buildings produced by those associated with the movement communicated how lines and colors should interact, and how a work's appearance is just as essential as its function.
Oil on canvas - Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Artwork Images Rietveld Schroder House (1924)Artist: Artwork description & Analysis: The Rietveld Schroder House is an important precursor to the Bauhaus-inspired International Style, as well as the only building designed in complete accordance with the De Stijl aesthetic. The house was commissioned in 1924 by Truus Schroder-Schrader, who intended for the new home to be grand and open ("without walls"), a veritable manifesto for how an independent modern woman should live her life. Featuring the typical De Stijl palette of primary colors, black, and white, the building emphasizes its architectural elements - slabs, posts, and beams - reflecting the movement's emphasis on form, construction, and function in its architecture and design. In other ways, too, the design represents a major departure from architectural convention and precedent. Inside, the rooms are constructed as movable entities with portable walls. In addition, Rietveld's design makes no attempt to interact with any of the surrounding buildings or roadways, suggesting its presence as an isolated structure focusing inward instead of outward.
Concrete, brick, and plaster, wood, steel girders - Utrecht, The Netherlands Artwork Images Arithmetic Composition (1929-30)Artist: Artwork description & Analysis: Made close to the end of van Doesburg's life, Arithmetic Composition reflects the artist's experimentation with abstract geometric shapes within a diagonal composition, resulting in a dimensional plane that would not have the same visual effect had the blocks been positioned vertically or horizontally. The work's diagonal configuration, combination of pure positive and negative space (black forms against white background), and incorporation of a curious backward "L" in the upper left corner, which consumes one block, create a sense of movement, making the shapes appear as if they are alternately moving toward and away from the viewer. However, unlike Mondrian's characteristic vertical-and-horizontal paintings, which lend themselves to the suggestion of figuration, van Doesburg here creates an abstract artwork totally devoid of the possibility of representation.
Oil on canvas - Kunstmuseum Winterthur, SwitzerlandLike The Art Story on Facebook More on De Stijl Including Overviews, Key Ideas, The Development and Growth of De Stijl, Useful Resources and Related Topics to De Stijl Related Art and ArtistsSuprematist Painting, Eight Red Rectangles (1915)Movement: Artist: Artwork description & Analysis: The three levels of Suprematism were described by Malevich as black, colored and white. Eight Red Rectangles is an example of the second, more dynamic phase, in which primary colors began to be used. The composition is somewhat ambiguous, since while on the one hand the rectangles can be read as floating in space, as if they were suspended on the wall, they can also be read as objects seen from above. Malevich appears to have read them in the latter way, since at one time he was fascinated by aerial photography. Indeed he later criticized this more dynamic phase of his Suprematist movement as 'aerial Suprematism,' since its compositions tended to echo pictures of the earth taken from the skies, and in this sense departed from his ambitions for a totally abstract, non-objective art.
The uneven spacing and slight tilt of the juxtaposed shapes in Eight Red Rectangles, as well as the subtly different tones of red, infuse the composition with energy, allowing Malevich to experiment with his concept of "infinite" space.Oil on canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York Artwork Images Homage to the Square: Dissolving/Vanishing (1951)Movement: Artist: Artwork description & Analysis: Josef Albers described his most famous series, Homage to the Square, as "platters to serve color." He began the series in 1949 and worked on it until his death in 1976. This early version demonstrates his systematic approach to investigating the optical effects of colors. With this series, Albers explored how colors change depending on their placement within the composition. Although the series was created several years after the Bauhaus movement, the work is typical of the experimental, modernist approach to form and color that underpinned Bauhaus teaching. Teachers at the school believed that colors and forms could be reduced to essentials and analyzed as separate components.