Biography

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld (June 24, 1888 in Utrecht – June 25, 1964 in Utrecht) was a Dutch architect and furniture designer. He also made graphic work, including posters and covers for magazines, including one for De Community in 1925. He is best known as a member of De Stijl and as a pioneer of new construction.
Youth and education
Between 1904 and 1908 he took evening classes with the architect Piet Klaarhamer and with the Art Industrial Education Association of the Utrecht Museum of Applied Arts in Utrecht. He was taught technical drawing, style and ornament by the director, architect P.J. Sawyers. In 1917 he opened his own furniture workshop at Adriaen van Ostadelaan 25

Wedding
On September 28, 1911, Rietveld married the nurse Vrouwgien Hadders. The couple had six children, four sons and two daughters, including the painter Bep Rietveld, the architect Jan Rietveld, the furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld Jr. and the designer Wim Rietveld. After he met Truus Schröder-Schräder in 1924, an interior designer and widow of a lawyer, who commissioned him to build a house for her family (later the Rietveld Schröder House), a lifelong intimate relationship developed with her and a fruitful cooperation in the field of architecture and home furnishings. From 1924 to 1933 his architectural firm was located in the Rietveld Schröder House.

De Stijl
Possibly through Klaarhamer, Rietveld became acquainted with modern designers such as Berlage and Frank Lloyd Wright. Around 1918, possibly under their influence, he began making experimental furniture, including the predecessor of the world-famous Red-Blue Chair, a colored slatted armchair. Although Rietveld himself emphatically saw the furniture as experiments – he is said to have designed the first Red-Blue chair for himself – his friend Robert van ‘t Hoff advised him to contact the magazine for modern art De Stijl, recently founded by Theo van Doesburg. . In July, Theo van Doesburg, the editor-in-chief, published a children’s chair by Rietveld in De Stijl and the slatted armchair followed in September.
Rietveld’s first experimental furniture was still unpainted. By also designing furniture for his six children and for the children of clients, he could afford more freedom. It was precisely this children’s furniture that he was the first to color. He had his high chair from 1918 painted green and fitted with red leather straps, while he provided his children’s wheelbarrow and handcart with the primary colors characteristic of De Stijl for the first time around 1923, followed not long afterwards by his Red-Blue chair.
His furniture was not only modern in appearance, but also cheap and easy to produce, so that the work of the executing craftsman was greatly facilitated. Yet Rietveld had no desire to change the taste of the common man. When architect and De Stijl member Oud furnished a model home in a housing complex he designed in Spangen with furniture by Rietveld in 1919,

Later he was part of the movement of Nieuwe Zakelijkheid. In 1919 he became an independent designer and furniture maker when he opened his company in Utrecht.
Rietveld designed the Rietveld Schröder House in 1924 in close collaboration with the only permanent resident of the house, the interior designer Truus Schröder-Schräder. The house is located on Prins Hendriklaan in Utrecht and, together with a house in the adjacent row of houses on Erasmuslaan, is part of the Centraal Museum.