Fons Schobbers (Venlo, 1947) is a Dutch sculptor. From 1966 to 1971, he attended the Akademie voor Industriële Vormgeving (Academy of Industrial Design) in Eindhoven. After working a few years as a product designer, he decided to be an independent artist in 1974. Schobbers lives and works in the monastery Mariënthal in Venlo. At the beginning, he made figurative work (torso’s, portraits), but his works of art became increasingly abstract. For more than 25 years, he was an advising teacher of sculpting at the Vrije Academie (Free Academy) in Venlo. Schobbers creates powerful, abstract shapes, inspired by nature in general and the human body in particular. His sculptures are in bronze, marble, wood, steel and glass. He also made models in plaster and polyester. Well known are the six sculptures of guilder notes he made for De Nederlandsche Bank, and the eleven-meter high sculpture of corten steel for the European headquarters of Sabic in Sittard. The sculptural bench Elisabeth is also known to a large audience and photographed by Erwin Olaf. Sculptures by Schobbers are in the collections of among others Shell, Amsterdam; DSM, Heerlen; Academisch Ziekenhuis, Groningen; the castle gardens of Arcen. Exhibitions: Limburgs Museum, Venlo, 2008; Galerie Mia Joosten, Amsterdam, 2010; the Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch, 2017.
