Restricting colour and form to make sure their compositions included only vertical and horizontal lines and primary colours was one of the main aims of the artists representing and supporting the Dutch De Stijl movement.
Among them there was also architect Gerrit Rietveld. The latter produced furniture following the De Stijl principles, also applied to the entire Rietveld Schröder house in Utrecht. For its sliding partitions, open spaces and free-floating wall planes, the house was considered as one of the masterpieces of De Stijl architecture.
Rietveld's furniture was also characterised by function and visual simplicity, and by a sense of movement granted by the use of diagonal lines. One of Rietveld's most famous pieces remains his Red and Blue Chair (1917) that, with its skeletal structure and supporting frame, could be considered as the projection into space and materialisation of Piet Mondrian's grid-like compositions that extended beyond the borders of the canvas.
Both Rietveld and Mondrian explored this principle of continuousness, allowing the painting or the object to disperse itself into the spatial field. In their work the grid is a symbol of continuum and free flowing spaciousness, a concept adopted also in Mies van der Rohe's interiors and in Le Corbusier's free plan.
The modern open grid recently re-appeared also in fashion in Yeohlee's Pre-Fall 2014 collection. Intended as a representation of the invisible and continuous field, as explored also in Rietveld's Steltman Chair (1963), the collection includes grid-like prints on trousers and dresses and minimalist lines intersecting with planes on tops and shirts.
Colour is introduced in some of the designs through prints inspired by the abstract Roman mosaic glass technique called murrine. Yet the best pieces remain the ones in which the designer explores the possibility of endless lines and lets them spill out of the contours of her designs, exploring the infinity of space.
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