Ton Frenken

Biography of Ton Frenken

Ton Frenken (1930-2004) studied law and cultural history at the Catholic University of Nijmegen from 1948 to 1954. Between 1951 and 1954 he took lessons at the Academy of Industrial Design in Eindhoven and the Jan Eyck Academy in Maastricht. From 1955 he worked as a painter and artist. Recognition of his work soon followed when he received the Willink van Collen Prize in 1956 and in 1959 the Royal Grant for Free Painting.

In addition to his work as an artist, Ton Frenken was very active in Noord-Brabant art life. For more than 25 years he wrote art reviews for the Brabants Dagblad, the Nieuwe Eindhovense Courant and Ons Erfdeel. Name and fame fell to him as the initiator and organizer of the large Jeroen Bosch exhibition in 1967. Between 1970 and 1986 he was director of the Cultural Council of Noord-Brabant and a teacher at the Royal Academy of Art and Design in Den Bosch. Between 1987 and 2004 he lived and worked successively for longer periods in Antwerp, Paris and Utrecht. Between 2000 and 2003 he was Director of the Jeroen Bosch Center foundation. After his death in 2008 in Den Bosch in memory of Ton Frenken's great achievements in the field of Art and Culture in North Brabant, a bust was unveiled on the forecourt of the old Jacobskerk, in which the Noordbrabants Museum was once located.