Released by Cassina in a numbered edition in 2015.
Edition no.8033
Lounge chair with frame in black-stained beechwood with painted white crossbar edges, plywood seat/backrest with polyester lacquer in dark green colour.
Company & designer marks on stretcher.
65,5 x 83 x 88 cm.
(including Cassina leather cushions)

Whilst Cassina was researching the origins of the Red and Blue model by Rietveld, it emerged that the key idea of the first prototypes was based on the concept of spatial organisation expressed through the monochrome tones of the parts.
The first version (the one upon which a young Rietveld is sitting on outside his furniture workshop in Utrecht) was in fact produced with unpainted wood. In the following years Rietveld proposed various examples, either monochrome or painted with different colours, according to the requirements of his customers and the interiors for which the chairs were intended. As such it comes as no surprise to find an example from the 1920s created for the Dutch school teacher, Wicher Zeilmaker, featuring a black frame and white ends but where the seat and backrest were painted dark green.

Rietveld believed that there was a greater goal for the furniture designer than just physical comfort – the well-being and comfort of the spirit. Rietveld & his de Stijl colleagues, including the movement’s most famous theorist and practioner, Piet Mondrian, sought to create a utopia based upon a harmonic man-made order, which they believed could renew Europe after the devastating turmoil of World War I.