Red-blue chair
designed (1917); manufactured (c. 1970)
Medium
painted beech and plywood, steel
Measurements
86.5 × 66.0 × 83.0 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1970
© Gerrit Rietveld Estate/Pictoright, Amsterdam. Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work
Deeply influenced by the painter Piet Mondrian and the rectilinear furniture designs of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Gerrit Rietveld aimed to express a pure, ascetic functionalism in his furniture designs. This chair was first produced in stained wood but Rietveld subsequently painted it red, blue and yellow. During the 1920s the chair came to be identified with the influential Dutch design movement De Stijl, now regarded as one of the first major modern design movements. Purged of all ornament and stripped back to its barest structure, Rietveld’s Red-blue chair is a play on verticals and horizontals, an abstract, architectural construction that has since become an icon of early twentieth-century modernism.
Artwork Details
Inscription
printed in ink and inscribed in blue ballpoint pen on paper label on base c.: G.A.v.d. GROENEKAN / Utrechtseweg 315, DE BILT / NEDERLAND
Accession Number
D33-1970
Department
International Decorative Arts
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited