|
Sketches from an Antique Shop Red, blue and black Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, born in 1918 in Utrecht, Holland constructed the famous Red/Blue chair, a composition of straight planes very wittily coloured in red, blue, yellow and black, experimented in functional abstraction and carried out artistic cubism. Rietveld, one of the essential players in the "Modern movement" in design believes in the directives of the modern era. His desire is to get rid of the Victorian satiation and instead offer a useful, simple high quality product for everyday use, which would be accessible since it would be serially produced in a factory. The period during the first world war and the decade following it presented an eruption of new, different ideas - reflections on architecture, fresh interiors, daringly designed furniture, materials such as cold aluminium and glass that so splendidly complement wood and plastic. All these ideas are like an universal language of modern design born in the De Stijl, Bauhaus, Constructivism and Futurism movements. In the same way as Rietveld designed pieces of furniture in coloured planes, his genius fellow countryman Piet Mondrian painted in geometrical abstraction as he reduced landscapes, houses and trees and transformed them into coloured planes, demarcated on the canvas by black lines. In 1920 he created the Composition in red, yellow and blue. The interlacing of design and architectural expression in the first half of the 20th Century gave birth to pieces of art that today act as the guidelines of modern design. Karin Košak |
|