Red/blue Chair

Designer Gerrit Thomas Rietveld (Dutch, 1888-1964)

Manufacturer G. van de Groenekan

Place of OriginNetherlands

DateDesigned 1918; Made between 1946-1956

Dimensions35 1/4 × 23 5/8 × 30 in. (89.5 × 60 × 76.2 cm)

MediumBeech (ebonized and painted)

ClassificationFurniture

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1985.48

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 03

Label TextGerrit Rietveld always identified himself primarily as a furniture maker, although he later came to be known as an innovative architect. In 1919, Rietveld joined the De Stijl movement (“The Style”), a Dutch artist group that included Piet Mondrian. De Stijl advocated purity of form and rejected the subjectivity of the artist, but Rietveld continued, in his own words, to “march to a different drummer.” The chair’s simple but solid back is unattached to the legs, a quite modern innovation at the time. The seat itself forms a right angle that seems to float at a slant above the angular open frame. Like Mondrian’s two-dimensional compositions, Red/Blue Chair features primary colors and uses negative space as effectively as positive space in the construction of the base. Finally, the consideration made for mass production by using standard-sized wood contributes to the chair’s celebrated status in the history of 20th-century design.