Living in Design: The Michael & Gabrielle Boyd Collection 
7 June 2023
Living in Design: The Michael & Gabrielle Boyd Collection 
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Gerrit Rietveld

Berlin chair

The Netherlands, 1923 / 1972-74
painted oak and laminated wood 41¾ h × 28¾ w × 22½ d in (106 × 73 × 57 cm)
estimate: $20,000–30,000
result: $15,120
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Signed to underside 'G.A.v.d. Groenekan'. Branded manufacturer's marks to underside ‘H.G.M. G.A.v.d. Groenekan De Bilt Nederland’. Stamped collector's mark to underside 'ABEN'.
provenance: Private Collection | Christie's, Amsterdam, 20th Century Decorative Arts, 18 November 2003, Lot 332 | Collection of Michael and Gabrielle Boyd
literature: Gerrit Th. Rietveld - The Complete Works, Kuper and van Zijl, pg. 92 The Complete Rietveld Furniture, Voge, pg. 60

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Gerrit Rietveld’s Berlin Chair

De Stijl Furniture as Geometric Sculpture

Following Gerrit Rietveld’s revolutionary Red and Blue chair (1918) and Elling cabinet (1919), he teamed with a fellow De Stijl member, painter Vilmos Huszár, to plan what became known as The Space-Colour Composition for the Juryfreie Kunstschau (Non-juried Art Exhibition) in Berlin in 1923.

The Space-Colour Composition
Renderings for The Space-Colour Composition, designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Vilmos Huszár in 1923 (Photo courtesy of Phaidon)

Featuring an interior space divided by wall panels and painted with large, geometric swaths of black, gray, white, and primary colors, Rietveld also designed furniture for the project, including the Berlin chair.

Gerrit Rietveld with Scale Model
Gerrit Rietveld with scale model (Photo courtesy of Phaidon)

Rietveld’s Berlin chair is a neoplastic wonder of geometric composition, with disparate planes of wood intersecting at right angles. For the first time, Rietveld clearly rejected the prevailing emphasis on symmetry in design. While each element of the construction is either square or rectangular, none of the pieces of wood are the exact same size and they are painted black, gray, or white. With one oversized armrest turned upward ninety degrees and the other armrest parallel to the ground, Rietveld produced Berlin chairs in either right-handed or left-handed versions.

For the first time, Rietveld clearly rejected the prevailing emphasis on symmetry in design.

Although the plans for The Space-Colour Composition were never carried out beyond the model stage, Rietveld nonetheless succeeded in devising a way for, as he put it, “form to win over the material” with the manifestation of the Berlin chair. An ingenious blend of art and design, this essential part of Rietveld's oeuvre dissolves the separation between form and function. The chair is an abstract, three-dimensional sculpture suggestive of a chair and vice-versa. The painted planes disguise the physicality of the wood, prioritizing above all surfaces and angles.

Not only did Rietveld decorate his own home with Berlin chairs, but the 1924 design of his world-famous Schröder House in Utrecht is in many ways suggestive of a large-scale Berlin chair, given the building's similar arrangement of planes and muted palette.

The present lot was fabricated in 1972-74 by master cabinetmaker G.A. van de Groenekan, whom Rietveld authorized to recreate his designs prior to his passing in 1964.

The Schröder House
The Schröder House in Utrecht, Netherlands, designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1924 (Photo courtesy of Phaidon)

Identity Pieces

Works by Gerrit Rietveld from the
Collection of Michael and Gabrielle Boyd

As an art student at the University of California in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Michael Boyd created geometric abstract paintings that alluded to the compositions of great non-objective painters like Mondrian and Malevich, only to be struck by how difficult it was to achieve a minimal work without superfluous ornamentation. The “art of reduction,” as Boyd describes it, was more complicated than it seemed, and has enthralled the collector for years.

To Boyd, Rietveld’s oeuvre represents a purity of form, concentrated vigor with timeless appeal.

The same notion is what first appealed to Boyd in the work of Gerrit Rietveld, which he describes as “three-dimensional Mondrian”. A self-proclaimed fanatic for the Dutch master, Boyd’s selection of works by Rietveld (the cornerstone of his collection) speaks to his sensibilities on a personal level, “I’m captivated with the early or proto-modernism in that hand-built art and objects were meant to look like they were machine-made…on one level the objects have a hand-wrought folk art sensibility and on another level the pieces represent the struggle to get to a universal place without ego”.

To Boyd, Rietveld’s oeuvre represents a purity of form, concentrated vigor with timeless appeal. These are the qualities that drive his passion for collecting and inspire his own creative output. The exceptional works offered here are identity pieces for both Rietveld and Boyd, embodiments of ambition captured in singular designs, encapsulating the philosophy of both their creator and their devotee.

Gerrit Rietveld 1888–1964

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Gerrit Rietveld was a celebrated designer and architect, famous for bringing the principles of the De Stijl Movement to these disciplines. Rietveld was born in 1888 in Utrecht, Netherlands to a family of cabinetmakers and later studied drafting and architecture. Rietveld opened his own furniture studio in 1917 and soon after became involved with the De Stijl Movement. In 1918, he designed his now-famous Red Blue armchair, which was heralded as a distillation of the movement’s emphasis on geometry, primary colors and an objective language of forms. He regarded this chair, and others he would design, as “spatial creations,” rather than simply furniture. The Schröder House in Utrecht, designed by Rietveld in 1924, is regarded as the architectural embodiment of the ideals of De Stijl and his most important work. In 1928, Rietveld distanced himself from De Stijl and became concerned with the challenges of affordable housing. He was a visionary in designing prefabricated and standardized buildings, of which the architectural world would not consider more seriously until the 1950s. In the 1930s and 1940s, Rietveld largely worked on private commissions and designed enduring modernist icons such as the Crate chair and Zig Zag chair, both from 1934. His last major work before his death in 1964 was the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which was completed in 1973.

Auction Results Gerrit Rietveld

Gerrit Rietveld

Rare Elling cabinet

estimate: $50,000–70,000

result: $72,500

Gerrit Rietveld

Schroeder House Dining Room Chair

estimate: $10,000–15,000

result: $64,350

Gerrit Rietveld

Danish chair

estimate: $30,000–50,000

result: $44,100

Gerrit Rietveld

Important Zig Zag dining suite for Alphonso "Fons" Johannes Seyler

estimate: $30,000–50,000

result: $37,500

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