Future exhibition
Jean-Marc Bustamante – Panorama
15.11.2026 – 31.01.2027
Jean-Marc Bustamante is one of France’s most important contemporary artists and is represented in renowned museums around the world. His close connection to the German art scene has had a decisive influence on his career: he participated in the documenta in Kassel in 1987, 1992 and 1997, and was artist in residence at Haus Lange in Krefeld in 1990. He had further solo exhibitions in 1994 at the Museum Wolfsburg (A World at a Time) and in 2002 at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg. From 2009 to 2015, Bustamante headed the painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Although Jean-Marc Bustamante is often perceived as a painter, he proves to be more of a consistent border crosser who constantly questions and shifts the boundaries of conventional categories. He overcomes these boundaries both in his technique, which incorporates the scriptural and the digital, and in his departure from canvas in favour of Plexiglas, steel and plaster, open image surfaces and hermetic wall surfaces. In the context of the Ludwig Museum, which is dedicated to contemporary French art, among other things, Jean-Marc Bustamante fits in particularly well due to his long-standing relationships with the German museum landscape. In collaboration with him, a cross-section of his nearly fifty years of work is being created, which is deliberately not a retrospective, but focuses on central artistic developments and his conceptual cornerstones.
Bustamante’s work has been the subject of numerous international solo exhibitions, including presentations at Tate Gallery, London (1998), the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris (1996), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (1994), and the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1992), as well as at Kunsthalle Bregenz and Musée d’Art Moderne Saint-Étienne Métropole (2006). Alongside his artistic practice, he has maintained an active engagement with academic teaching, including positions at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. From 2015 to 2019, he served as director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His international standing is further reflected in his participation in documenta 8, 9 and 10 (1987, 1992 and 1997), as well as in the presentation of his work at major art institutions around the world.
The exhibition has been made possible in large part through the generous support of the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation, Aachen.
Jean-Marc Bustamante: Amanda et Lisa, 2008, encre sur plexiglas, 195 x 274 cm x 5 cm © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2026