Red and Blue – Cassina

Designed by
Gerrit Thomas Rietveld

A sculptural seat with a pure and rationalist form, this chair became an authentic Manifesto for Neoplasticism, embraced by the Dutch De Stijl movement in 1917. An outlook shared by Piet Mondrian, whose objective was to seek out the essential nature of things, combined with the harmonious equivalence of colours, and the use of right-angle. Rietveld produced his first prototypes in 1918, expressing the philosophy of organising space using the same colours for similar components. He later applied this same approach to separate out constructional elements according to their function. Thus the base was black, and the seats coloured. As a consequence, the name of the piece changed, from Slat Chair to Red and Blue.