Ever-changing spaces

Next to the collection-presentations and the temporary exhibitions the museum contains a few rooms that alternatley will be established with works from the collection. These works will be collected from the depot and presented shortly in these ever-changing rooms. In this way the passage to the collection-presentations and the temporary exhibitions will remain refreshing and amazing for the visitor.

At the moment the following artists are represented in the ever-changing spaces:

Fons Haagmans (1948, Schinnen)

Fons Haagmans is one of today's most important artists of the Netherlands. As a painter, he searches for the limits of the medium in a very individual way. After an expressionist period, he eventually arrived at a minimalist and decorative approach in the eighties.
Besides his appeal to something like a bygone collective memory, Fons Haagmans appears to be in search of the roots of representation. simplified, abstracted images like those from a school primer are applied to canvases that normally bear a rather refined, distinguished form of painting. Haagmans rides roughshod over 'High Art' and prefers to assume the guise of a house painter. He has had a great influence on other artists. Haagmans has also had quite an influence on the younger generations, through his work as a teacher at the Rijksacademie and the Jan van Eyck Academie.
The Bonnefantenmuseum has followed Fons Haagmans intensively since 1986 and now has fifteen of his paintings and thirty works on paper in the collection.


Joseph Beuys (1921 Krefeld – 1986 Düsseldorf)

Undoubtedly the best-known and most controversial artist in post-war Germany is Joseph Beuys. With his equally famous and misunderstood quote: "Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler" and his views on 'social sculpture', he placed art within the widest framework imaginable. Beuys' oeuvre includes drawings, sculptures and installations, but his erweiterten Kunstbegriff was manifested mainly in Aktionen (performances). In interaction with his audiences, the charismatic German artist carried out ritualistic actions, amidst carefully arranged objects and materials, thus giving shape to transitional situations and transformation processes. He is well-known for his use of felt and fat: felt as a symbol of life-giving warmth and security, and fat as a substance that is transformed from a solid to a liquid when heated. 
In 1975, Beuys was invited by the Bonnefantenmuseum to illustrate his position as an artist and teacher, and his opinions on the task of a work of art in his erweiterten Kunstbegriff, by way of an exhibition, a lecture and a discussion.Beuys decided to donate all the documents on display to the museum. Nearly all the posters, exhibition catalogues, invitations and other material were signed by the artist, and by signing them, Beuys gave the documents a place in his oeuvre.