Red and Blue Chair

RED and Blue Chair

The Red and Blue Chair
Designer	Gerrit Rietveld
Date	1918
Materials	Lacquered wood
Style / tradition	De Stijl
Height	88 cm (35 in)
Width	66 cm (26 in)
Depth	83 cm (33 in)

The Red and Blue Chair is a chair designed in 1917 by Gerrit Rietveld. It represents one of the first explorations by the De Stijl art movement in three dimensions.

History

The original chair was constructed of unstained beech wood and was not painted until the early 1920s. Fellow member of De Stijl and architect, Bart van der Leck, saw his original model and suggested that he add bright colours. He built the new model of thinner wood and painted it entirely black with areas of primary colors attributed to De Stijl movement. The effect of this color scheme made the chair seem to almost disappear against the black walls and floor of the Schröder house where it was later placed. The areas of color appeared to float, giving it an almost transparent structure.

The Museum of Modern Art, which houses the chair in its permanent collection, a gift from Philip Johnson, states that the red, blue,and yellow colors were added around 1923. The chair also resides at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. It features several Rietveld joints.

The Red and Blue Chair was reported to be on loan to the Delft University of Technology Faculty of Architecture as part of an exhibition. On May 13, 2008, a fire destroyed the entire building, but the Red and Blue Chair was saved by firefighters.

As of 2012, it resides in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

As of 2013, it has been moved to Auckland, New Zealand.

See also

• Zig-Zag Chair

External links

• Building plan (adaptation based loosely on original)
• plans in PDF with dimensions in mm
• Gerrit Rietveld's Red and Blue Chair & What I Learned about Rest and Motion in Myself, by Anthony Romeo
• Museum of Modern Art