Red Blue Chair
A chair like a three-dimensional diagram: straight rails, two boards and pure colours.
The joiner and architect Gerrit Rietveld made the chair around 1918. Around 1923 it was painted in the colours of the Dutch group De Stijl: red, blue, yellow and black.
The chair shows how a piece of furniture can be broken down into its parts and exhibited as an idea. It is still protected by copyright, so only a drawing is shown here.
Materials: Beech or pine, painted
Manufacture: Built from standard timber sections and screwed together; the first version was unpainted.
The rails run past one another at every junction.
Red on the back, blue on the seat, black rails with yellow ends.
No curved parts at all.