Gerrit Rietveld
May 23 - July 13, 2025
opening Friday 23 May 23 17.00 hrs
In the Third Rietveld exhibition in Rotteram at Galerie VIVID an oak desk Rietveld designed for a Dutch lawyer in 1935 was the starting point of this exhibition. It is the first time that the public can become acquainted with this unknown work by Rietveld, where only drawings by Rieteld were published.
There will be 15 (!) historical works by Rietveld on display, accompanied by historical photographs of Rietveld's buildings and interiors and of Gerard van de Groenekan's workshop, where most of Rietveld's works were made.
Gerrit Rietveld (Utrecht, 1888-1964) seems possessed of two personalities, each so distinct that one might take his work to be that of more than one artist. The first personality is that seen in the craftsman cabinet-maker working in a primordial idiom, re-inventing chairs and other furniture as if no one had ever built them before him and following a structural code all of his own; the second is that of the architect working with elegant formulas, determined to drive home the rationalist and neoplastic message in the context of European architecture. The two activities alternate, overlap, and fuse in a perfect osmosis unfolding then into a logical sequence. In 1918 Rietveld joined the “De Stijl” movement which had sprung up around the review of that name founded the year before by Theo van Doesburg. The group assimilated and translated into ideology certain laws on the dynamic breakdown of compositions, carrying them to an extreme. Rietveld soon became, with his funiture and architecture, one of the most distinguished interpreters of the neoplastic message.
