Thomas Gerrit Rietveld

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, Dutch architect and craftsman was born in 1888 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He began his educational and working career in his father's carpentry shop and continued his studies by taking courses in architecture, eventually devoting himself to the design and manufacture of furniture for interior design. Two personalities seem to emerge in his works, alternating and blending seamlessly: the first represents the cabinetmaker of primordial language who invents furniture following a structural code, while the second represents the architect with a rational, neo-plastic style with elegant forms. In 1919 Rietveld joined the "De Stijl" movement, a group of architects and designers based on the laws of dynamic decomposition, which was already widespread in Europe and soon became one of the most representative interpreters of neoplasticism in architecture and furniture.