Louis Schrikkel (Amsterdam 1902-The Hague 1995) moved in the early 1930s to Tuindorp Watergraafsmeer, a newly built residential area dating from 1923 in Amsterdam East, better known as “Betondorp” (Concrete Village). Other well-known residents of Betondorp included the writer Gerard Reve, photographer Ed van der Elsken, and footballer Johan Cruijff. In 1933, Schrikkel painted a number of houses in Betondorp seen from the garden side (in the collection of Museum MORE). The subdued colour palette of this painting corresponds with the gloomy, melancholic image that many people associated with Betondorp. This sense of melancholy is also reflected in a childhood memory described in Reve’s epistolary novel ‘On the Way to the End (Op Weg N...