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| Mondrian painting at Berlage Museum exhibit |
I tried to get into a tour of the Rietveld-Schroeder House,
a UNESCO World Heritage site, on Thursday, when I was still in Utrecht, but
they were all booked. The only available tour was on Sunday, my last day in
Holland. In the end it was a perfect addition to the exhibit in the Hague. A New York Times article written in 1989
described the house like walking into a Mondrian painting.
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| The iconic Rietveld chair |
I fully agree. The
house was built in 1924 and at the time, shocked the surrounding neighborhood
by its modernity. Even now it seems very out of place juxtaposed against more
conventional brick houses.
The house represented a collaboration between Mrs.
Truus Schroeder and the furniture maker/architect Gerrit Rietveld. Mrs.
Schroeder had a conventional home, but when her husband died she commissioned
Rietveld to build her new house. As you can see from the exterior, the only
colors used are black, white, gray, blue, yellow, and red.
These are the only colors in the interior (we
couldn’t take photos inside). The house
was designed to blend the outside and inside, much like Fallingwater does.
Everything inside had multiple functions and space was used very efficiently.
On the top floor there were innovative folding walls that created very
different living spaces for day and night. Beds doubled as couches during the
day. Rietveld designed the furniture and lighting as well.
The house was a
statement of Mrs. Schroeder’s unconventional lifestyle, which promoted the
“luxury of frugality.” She was also unconventional in her lifestyle. Rietveld,
her architect, placed his studio on the ground floor of the house, and worked
there daily until his wife died and then he moved in. The New York Times said
that if there “was anything more than friendship and intellectual and esthetic
rapport, there is no contemporary evidence.” However, the audiotour made it
very clear that they were lovers and “kindred spirits.” Having seen the house
and its intimate spaces, I would tend to believe the audiotour!
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