"Elling" Sideboard

Gerrit Rietveld

designed 1919, made c. 1960

Beechwood, paint

Dallas Museum of Art

Gerrit Rietveld, a member of the De Stijl (The Style) movement in the Netherlands, was profoundly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright's drawings published in Germany in 1910. Like Wright, the De Stijl group believed in the simplification of forms and the power of straight horizontal and vertical lines. By reducing colors and forms to a regimented grid, Rietveld transformed an everyday functional object into a complex yet subtle three-dimensional composition in gray and white. Gerrit Rietveld, a member of the De Stijl (The Style) movement in the Netherlands, was profoundly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright's drawings published in Germany