Red and Blue Chair

Overview

The Red and Blue (Cassina 635) is an armchair by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld; the page says it was designed in 1918, and the product sheet gives Cassina production as 1973 under the heading Cassina iMaestri Collection. Cassina calls it a design armchair in the guise of a Rationalist geometric sculpture and a masterpiece among the foremost examples of Neoplasticism, promoted by the Dutch De Stijl movement.

Construction

The sheet lists a solid beech structure, matt black lacquered, with the crossbar edges in yellow, and a construction system based exclusively on joints and wooden pins. The seat and backrest are birch plywood panels with beech-veneered edges and tops, finished semi-gloss in blue for the seat and red for the backrest.

Specifications

• Dimensions (635 01): W 65.5 cm × D 83 cm × H 88 cm; a 33 cm vertical line in the side and front views is not labelled on the drawing
• Structure: solid beech, matt black lacquered, crossbar edges yellow
• Seat / backrest: birch plywood with beech-veneered edges and tops, semi-gloss blue seat and red backrest

From Slat Chair to Red and Blue

As the sheet tells it, Rietveld worked on the first prototypes in 1918, expressing a philosophy of organising space by giving similar components the same colour. He then used colour to set the constructional elements apart by function: a black base and coloured seating parts. The name of the piece changed accordingly, from Slat Chair to Red and Blue.

Manifesto of Neoplasticism

The sheet calls the chair a sculptural seat of pure, rationalist form and an authentic manifesto of Neoplasticism, which it traces to the Dutch De Stijl movement in 1917 and links to Piet Mondrian's search for the essential nature of things, harmonious colour equivalence and exclusive use of the right angle.