Graphic designer Jan Bons will be ninety years old in April. In honour of this major name in the world of graphic design, Kunsthal Rotterdam presents a survey exhibition of ninety of his posters.
To the big public Jan Bons is known for, amongst others, his eye-catching posters for theatre group De Appel and film festival IDFA. Together with Otto Treumann, Dick Elffers and Willem Sandberg, that Dutch graphic design has become known world-wide after the Second World War.
Jan Bons
Throughout his life Jan Bons has remained active as a graphic designer, even now that he is well on in years. Not too long ago he designed posters for both the Nieuw Ensemble and IDFA.The 76 metres long wall-painting that Bons created together with Rietveld for the world exhibition 'Así es Holanda' in Mexico in 1952 is, as a smaller replica, presented in the Kunsthal.
Documentary
Lex Reitsma captured him on camera working on these posters in the documentary 'Designing in freedom', which is to be shown at the exhibition from April onwards. This documentary provides us with a rather intimate portrait, in which Bons himself tells us about his mode of operation, his role in the War and the cooperation with his friends Rietveld and Sandberg.
Publication
'Jan Bons - ontwerpen in vrijheid', published by De Buitenkant (ISBN 978 90 76452 19 7) biography written by Paul Hefting and to which the film by Lex Reitsma belongs, only available in Dutch.
