Gerrit Rietveld was a furniture designer as well as an architect. He was born in 1888 at Utrecht in the Netherlands. As a young boy, he worked and trained in his father’s carpentry shop which produced quality furniture to match the taste of the bourgeois, who were the local customers.
It is in this shop that he learnt how to make his first cabin. In 1911 he left the family workshop and trained as an architectural draftsman. With the influence of the Amsterdam school, he was determined to search for his own independent line of art.
While he was still studying architecture in 1916, Gerrit Rietveld opened his own furniture factory. He re-invented various structures and objects like chairs, and built them in the form of constructivist sculptures. It is from there that he designed the famous Red and Blue Chair in the year that followed.
When Gerrit Rietveld became an architect in 1919, he became a member of the ‘De Stijl’ movement. With the influence of the movement, he changed the chair’s colour and gave it the familiar style. He came into contact with many architects who were members of the modern Dutch movement.
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