1966 is an important year in Bob Bonies’ career. The most important breakthrough occurred at his participation in the international exhibition “Forms of Color,” which Wim Beeren organized in late 1966 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam with artists who used a “cool working method. Prior to this, Bonies had a studio exhibition at the Stedelijk in May.

There he showed a colossal object consisting of three wall-mounted, rectangular equivalent panels and a colored beam, which came down from the wall at an angle into the room and rested on the floor. By doing so, he created a rectangular shape. The three panels had four contiguous, colored stripes painted diagonally on the canvas. The colors staggered from panel to panel, with the bands of color accurately matching the previous or next panel.

In Forms of Color, Beeren presented a rich company of artists such as Donald Judd, Elsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Frank Stella, Barnett Newman, and the Swiss pioneers of concrete art Max Bill and Richard Lohse. Bonies, Hans Koetsier, the “systematic” Peter Struycken, and Mark Brusse were the only Dutch representatives of the new abstract generation.