Gerrit Rietveld, Vilmos Huszar, a model room for an exhibition in Berlin, Germany, 1923
Gerrit Rietveld, Vilmos Huszar, a model room for an exhibition in Berlin, Germany, 1923
Gerrit Rietveld, Vilmos Huszar, a model room for an exhibition in Berlin, Germany, from the year of 1923. In 1923 Rietveld and the De Stijl painter, Huszar, designed a model room for an exhibition in Berlin,. Huszar planned the colours and Rietveld the furniture and layout. The Berlin chair was designed for this exhibit. The ‘Berlin chair’ gets its name because it was specially designed for the exposition room by Rietveld and Huszar in the show in Berlin in 1923. This chair, which later was frequently referred to as ‘the plank chair’, was executed with a mirror image twin. Rietveld has sacrificed anatomical considerations in order to produce what is virtually a De Stijl sculpture in an unlimited edition,with all the characteristic juxtaposition of planes in space and subtle differentiation of parts using various greys. It is strongly reminiscent of Mondrian’s earlier paintings. The Berlin chair is unlike the Red-Blue both in its asymmetry and the predominance of planes rather than lines.Structurally, all the parts add rigidity to each other, rendering the simple lapped joins perfectly strong. Around 1923 Rietveld introduced two new formal elements in his furniture designs: these were asymmetry and constructions with flat panels. Both of these formal elements can be arrived at by consistently thinking through the consequences of a previous exercise, namely how to create an open spatial structure from equally valued elements.
links :
Reviewed by Esteve P.