Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, born in Utrecht on June 24, 1888, seems to possess two personalities, each so distinct that one might consider his work to be that of more than one artist. The first personality is that of the artisan cabinetmaker working in a primitive language, reinventing chairs and other furniture as if no one had built them before him and following his own structural code; the second is that of the architect working with elegant formulas, determined to convey the rationalist and neoplastic message within the context of European architecture. The two activities alternate, overlap, and merge in a perfect osmosis, then unfolding in a logical sequence. In 1918, Rietveld joined the "De Stijl" movement, which had emerged around the magazine of that name founded the previous year by Theo van Doesburg. The group assimilated and translated into ideology certain laws concerning the dynamic decomposition of compositions (taking them to the extreme) that had already been expressed in painting by the Cubists: the “De Stijl” artists also carefully studied the architectural lesson taught by the great Frank Lloyd Wright, whose influence was widely felt in Europe at the time. Collaborating first with Robert van't Hoff and Vilmos Huszar, then with Theo van Doesburg and Cornelius van Eesteren, Rietveld soon became one of the most distinguished interpreters of the Neoplastic message. Among his most important works are: the Schröder House in Utrecht (1924); the “Townhouses” in Utrecht (1931-34); the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1954); the sculpture pavilion of the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterloo and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (1955).
Source: https://www.cassina.com/ww/en/maestri/gerrit-thomas-rietveld.html
