Gerrit Thomas Rietveld

(1888–1964).

Dutch designer and important De Stijl architect. He designed several items of furniture in which the elements of the structure were unequivocally expressed (e.g. the Red-Blue Chair (1918) ). From 1921 he began to work with the designer, Mrs Truus (G. A.) Schröder-Schräder (1889–1985), on the planning of the celebrated Schröder House, Prins Hendriklaan, Utrecht (completed 1924), in which De Stijl principles were applied to architecture for the first time: with its adaptable interior spaces, removable partitions, asymmetry, white slabs, and large areas of glass it became a paradigm of International Modernism. Like his furniture, the house seems to be put together from pieces of card-like elements, with planes overlapping, but it is constructed almost entirely of traditional materials, and expressed its ‘modernity’ largely by metaphor. He also designed terrace-houses, Erasmuslaan (1934), and the Vreeburg Cinema (1936), both in Utrecht. With others he designed the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam (1963–72). He was a founder-member of CIAM.

T. Brown (1958);Buffinga (1971);G. Fanelli (1968);Jaffé (1956);Küper & Zijl (eds.) (1992);Mulder & Zijl (1999);Overy (1969);Overy et al. (1988);Placzek (ed.) (1982);Jane Turner (1996)