Gerrit T Reitveld possessed a duality of character which was exhibited in two ways. First was as a craftsman cabinet maker, working in a primordial idiom, reinventing chairs and other furniture as if no one had ever built them before and following a structural code all of his own; the second is that of an architect working with elegant formulas, determined to drive home the rationalist and neoplastic message in the context of European Architecture.

In 1918 Reitveld joined the De Stijl movement which had sprung up around the review of that name founded the year before by Van Doesburg, translating certain laws of composition that had already been expressed by the Cubists.