I'm cycling towards Utrecht University. I have a pending visit to its botanical garden, but I will leave it for another day. For now I cross the Wilhelminpark and take Prins Hendriklaan street. In the background, it seems that the city ends. And the truth is that a century ago the houses ended there and the countryside began. Today, however, it is the slope of the highway that prevents you from seeing what is beyond, although there will be something, since the street enters through a passage so low that you would have to bow your head to cross it. But I don't cross it, because I stop before.
To my left, an image appears that I have seen repeated in every self-respecting contemporary art book. Because this is where the young widow Truus Schröder decided to buy a small piece of land and commissioned Gerrit Rietveld to design the house where she would live with her three children.
Gerrit Rietveld had started working as a carpenter in his father's workshop. He studied architecture at night school while making furniture and, carried away by the spirit of the time, opted for reduction to the essential. Hence his red and blue chair, from 1919 (which in its first versions was neither red nor blue, but rather had a natural finish). Rietveld applied the colors when he joined the De Stijl movement. The promoter of it, the painter Piet Mondrian, defended that all abstraction should be reduced to straight lines and primary colors. And then yes, painted black, blue, red and yellow, Rietveld's chair became the sculptural icon of the group, just as the architectural icon is also his, and I have it here before me: the Rietveld-Schröder House, from 1924.
The exterior refers to the compositions of the Russian constructivists. I review the three facades on view. They are made up of white and gray rectangles, which stand out in different planes and alternate with balconies, windows and doors. Only a few beams show a brief note of color.
The visit begins at the door of the neighboring house, where they serve me an audio guide. Opposite, a panel remembers that the young Truus van Lier lived there. The girl with the unforgettable eyes was described by her neighbor Mrs. Schröder. I read that Truus van Lier joined the resistance during the Nazi occupation. She was arrested after attacking the police superintendent and was shot to death in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Heads and tails, black and white in such a small space.
Begin your visit to the Rietveld-Schröder House on the ground floor: rooms with natural light, clean walls, primary colors. However, it is on the floor above where Rietveld applied himself with a cabinetmaker's delicacy. At the entrance, you discover three bedrooms, plus the dining room and the bathroom. But then, by the art of birlibirloque, the panels that delimit the rooms begin to disappear and the entire apartment becomes an open space, which, when opening the windows, even erases the border between interior and exterior. The Rietveld-Schröder House is a precision mechanism without an extra piece, where everything makes sense, everything fits and nothing is left over.
It was what Truus Schröder had in his head and Rietveld materialized. His personal and professional connection led Rietveld to install his studio in the basement of this his first work as an architect.
I go out and review the facades again. Now I understand them for what they are, the expression of what is available inside. And suddenly I hear a crash, and a long, high-pitched screech, to which is added an anguished neigh. And I see a car leaving the highway underpass. Drag a horse trailer, too high. It has skimmed the entire ceiling. The girl driving brakes, gets out and goes to calm the poor animal. No, not everyone combines vision, space, art and rigor like Truus Schröder and Gerrit Rietveld.
