Design moment: Red and Blue Chair c.1918

Comfort isn’t really the point when it comes to the Red and Blue Chair designed by Dutch designer Gerrit Reitveld (1888-1964). The chair in its simplicity and austere functionality has become a metaphor for the modernist movement.

Reitveld was a trained cabinetmaker working alongside his father in traditional forms until he became a member of the experimental and influential De Stijl (the style) modernist movement. They experimented with basic geometric shapes and primary colours (red, blue, yellow) and this chair, often described as a three-dimensional Mondrian painting, is the ultimate expression of that thinking. While the chair with its vertical and horizontal planes was designed in 1918, its bright colour scheme came about later when Reitveld was designing that masterclass in modernist architecture, the Schröder House in Utrecht. Just as people stand in front of modernist abstract paintings and proclaim, “Sure, I could do that”, so too this chair – and that would have pleased Reitveld.

The simplicity of construction he hoped would lead to mass production – although that never happened. He deliberately chose pieces of wood in readily available standard lengths and how the chair is made is there for all to see in its stripped-down form.

And while he wasn’t thinking of comfort in the traditional, practical, padded seat sense, he was thinking of it in the more abstract way that informed modernist architecture and art – that the design in its pared-down, uncomplicated way would provide comfort for the mind.

The chair is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.