Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964) was a Dutch furniture designer and architect and one of the leading members of the De Stijl movement. Born in Utrecht, the son of a joiner, he left school at 11 to work in his father's workshop and taught himself drawing and model-making before opening his own furniture workshop in 1917. His Red and Blue Chair, designed that year and recoloured after he joined De Stijl in 1919, became one of the best-known pieces of modern furniture. In 1928 he broke with De Stijl for a more functional architecture, joined CIAM, and experimented early with prefabricated concrete, standardisation and cheap social housing; he also designed the Zig-Zag Chair in 1934.
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The Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht (1924), designed with its owner Truus Schröder-Schräder, has an upper floor with no fixed walls, only sliding partitions that change the living space; it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. The Garage with Chauffeur's Flat in Utrecht (1928) followed. After the war he rebuilt the Dutch Pavilion, Venice Biennale (1954), and he began the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (1973), which was completed after his death.
