Jurriaan Molenaar painted the Rietveld Schröder House, an architectural highlight of De Stijl, in three paintings. Tectonic interiors that vividly connect the inside with the outside. Molenaar paints spaces, paints architecture, with a great emphasis on painting. Because what he paints is not a representation of a building or room, but space. His paintings offer a spatial experience. The viewer's gaze is drawn into the depicted architectural space and a sense of space, a physical feeling, slowly emerges. In this way, Molenaar has cancelled the separation between seeing and being, between representation and reality. Rietveld would probably be satisfied with the paintings of the Schröder House. Because of the precision of the spatial composition, which makes the eye dance, and because of the precision of the painting itself, the quality of the craftsmanship. Molenaar also solves a dilemma that Rietveld had to struggle with. As a committed member of the Stilgruppe, Rietveld supported the pursuit of a synthesis of the arts in which the boundaries between the various art forms dissolve into an integrated form of artistic practice. He himself was never really able to realise this form of collaboration. He liked to retain control over his own work. In his paintings, Molenaar explores the relationship between the different arts: architecture, painting, scenography. Without seeking direct collaboration, he enters into dialogue and crosses the boundaries of the arts, which he simultaneously respects by remaining within his profession. In the three paintings of the Schröder House, Molenaar shows Rietveld's dynamic space. In each painting there is a connection between the interior space and the infinity of the unformed exterior space. The perspective changes depending on the painting: central perspective, two almost symmetrical vanishing points or a clearly asymmetrical perspective. The colours support the space by following the perspective and emphasising the depth, or by doing the opposite and forming a frame around the centre of the picture, making the perspective flatter and flatter. In the third interior space, a cascade of colours draws a diagonal band through the painting and gives the perspective enormous speed. The mastery of the colour palette, the subtle brushwork and the suggestion of space through the painting of transitions, connections and reflections of surfaces and lines, which are impossible in real space, characterise all of Molenaar's paintings. Through the dialogue with Rietveld in these paintings, Molenaar's work has gained even more depth, spatiality and communicative power for the viewer. 

Text: Michel Melenhorst