Hogestoel highback chair

Rietveld’s “Hogestoel” was a very modern chair for its time, and it was photographed in several avant-garde interiors. It first appeared in print in the Dutch journal De Stijl, no. 12 (1920), as part of an interior designed by Theo van Doesburg in 1919. The same year it was published, Rietveld used a version of the chair in a modern interior for a clinic at Maarssen, Holland (along with a version of the light fixture seen in this gallery), though that chair did not have the two original side panels. The chair’s form has many affinities with Russian Constructivism, characterized by planar elements that seemingly float in space.