Born in Utrecht on June 24, 1888, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld seems to embody two distinct personalities, so clearly defined that his work appears almost as if it were not the creation of a single artist. The first is that of the cabinetmaker, a craftsman of a primordial language, who reinvents chairs and furniture as if no one had ever built them before, following his entirely personal structural code. The second is that of the architect, working with elegant formulas to assert, within the context of European architecture, rationalist and neoplastic principles.