Gerrit Thomas Rietveld (1888-1964), architect and furniture designer, was a member of the group of Dutch artists and architects known as de Stijl. He was the first to give its esthetic program visible form.

Gerrit Rietveld was born on June 24, 1888, in Utrecht and lived there most of his life. He was trained as a cabinetmaker by his father (1899-1906) and as a jewelry designer in the studio of C. J. Begeer (1906-1911). For the next 8 years he was self-employed as a cabinetmaker while studying and working with the architect P. J. Klaarhamer. Rietveld's career as an independent architect began in 1919.

A commission to copy from photographs furniture designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright for a client of the Dutch architect Robert van't Hoff brought Rietveld into contact with de Stijl (the Style), founded in 1917. De Stijl advocated a "pure" artistic expression based upon the interrelationship in...