The pop art era was a wonderful time. It was the 60s and everything was allowed and possible. Burgering painted (pop art) paintings at that time, including Hiroshima mon Amour and Baron von Münchhausen. After that romantic period, he was the first artist to start painting space paintings. Large paintings based on photos that appeared in the newspapers. That was a golden move at that time. Many exhibitions were the result, including in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Mickery Loenersloot, Galerie Seriaal in Amsterdam. Many works by Burgering were also purchased by Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Peter Stuyvesant Collection, Frits & Agnes Brecht, Mickery Loenersloot, Galerie Seriaal in Amsterdam. Many private collectors also purchased his work. The Dutch government also has many of his works in its possession and they can be seen on the website of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.

Toni Burgering passed away on 21 May 2017.

The Algemeen Dagblad/Rotterdams Dagblad commemorated him as a ‘neon artist’,
famous for Lucebert’s line of poetry ALLES VAN WAARDE IS WEERLOOS. The line of poetry, placed in colourful neon on the roof of the insurance company Nieuw Rotterdam on the Blaak, welcomed
train passengers who visited or departed from the city for years. Even after the disappearance of the elevated railway, the line remained a Rotterdam landmark. The owners and users of the building on which the line was displayed changed rapidly, but the neon artwork was always maintained.

A few years ago, the line was temporarily removed in connection with renovation work, but
recently, just before Toni’s death, the line returned to its familiar place.

The artist made more sculptures in the public space of Rotterdam.

For the facade of the old library he made a mural of the School report of Bob den Uyl (1989). He also designed Question of Balance (2006) a light sculpture on the Evenaarsplein in Prins Alexander and placed the neon poem of Gerrit Kouwenaar Who wants to know more, must eat words (2008) on the
roof of the library on the Grote Visserijplein. Toni liked to be in the company of writers and poets.
Toni was born in 1936 in Barneveld (among other things, he decorated the town hall of his birthplace). In Arnhem he started his career as a cinema advertising painter and in Rotterdam he worked as a
window dresser for Vroom & Dreesmann. He attended the Rotterdam art academy and developed a special interest in pop art. During the years 1961-1964 he exhibited in the Groothandelsgebouw and the AMVJ building. Thanks to Wim Gijzen and Woody van Amen his artistic life was given a professional
embedding. With his mischievous behaviour, bravado and bright yellow suits, Toni was a striking figure in Rotterdam. He was fascinated by the youth culture in the United States: consumerism, space travel, eroticism and pop music would play a major role in his work. He also retained a lasting love for neon in America. He visited the launch station of the Apollo rockets at Cape Kennedy, met actors and
actresses on !film sets in Hollywood, attended jet set parties that upheld the motto sex, drugs and
rock-’n-roll and got to know artists such as Andy Warhol. In Van Amen tot Zekveld (1994), Gepke Bouma wrote: “In 1966, Toni had his first solo exhibition at Galerie Delta with work that was unabashedly inspired by America and American Pop Art. They are images of naked women, borrowed from sex magazines, in classical-erotic poses in bourgeois interiors or stretched out on the American flag. He soon became fascinated by space travel, that triumph of technology with mythical proportions. His space travel works consist of flatly painted scenes, based on newspaper photos, of cosmonauts floating in space or astronauts on the surface of the moon.”
With these works, Toni became widely known. Collectors bought his works and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen also included works in the City Collection. In 1970 he proposed placing a huge Saturn rocket on the Schouwburgplein, but the Human Monument, as he called the statue, was rejected by sponsors as grotesque. In the 1970s he devoted himself entirely to neon. He made about ten works for the public space of Rotterdam and a number of his light objects can still be found (https://www.cbkrotterdam.nl)
in the Kunstuitleen. For years Toni worked on a plan to wrap the Euromast in pink neon, like a huge candy floss, but sponsor campaigns and presentations did not result in a concrete action. Toni was also a great lover of works of art in the public space. Armed with a camera he made dozens of morning walks, during which he captured sculptures, murals, facade images and ornaments. At home, in his house at
Waterwerk in De Esch, he created a gigantic image archive that he transferred to Centrum Beeldende Kunst (CBK) Rotterdam in 2006. To this day, the BKOR website (http://www.bkor.nl) gratefully uses Toni’s material.

For a long time, Toni worked from a beautiful studio in the old library.

Because he was intensively involved in the design of the Onderwijsmuseum, which was located in the
old library on the Nieuwe Markt, he was offered the studio ‘for life’ as a thank you. Here he made the designs for his neon sculptures and also realised a series of paintings of pop musicians, including Beyoncé, Prince, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. But after the Onderwijsmuseum left Rotterdam in 2013, the promise ‘for life’ turned out to be an empty concept. Toni Burgering was a remarkable artist who made the whole world his workfield, but who also felt completely at home in the development that Rotterdam went through after the Second World War. For CBK Rotterdam, Toni was an inspiring partner in many ways; for years, his neon work on the roofline of the building on Nieuwe Binnenweg even served as a kind of logo for our visitors.
We are pleased that his spirit remains among us through a number of other works in the public space of
Rotterdam.

Visit the website toniburgering.nl for more information about the artist, the exhibitions, the collections and the commissions.

visit to Andy Warhol 1969 with his wife Gaja