Best Friends! at the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss: Art about Human and Animal


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Best Friends! at the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss: Naive Art, Animal Images, and Closeness
The exhibition Best Friends! Human and Animal in Naive Art invites you to an art-historically fascinating examination of works starting from November 15, 2026. At the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss, paintings, drawings, and sculptures come together that explore the relationship between humans and animals with unfiltered intensity, imagination, and painterly directness. The show runs until April 25, 2027, and presents significant positions of Naive Art in a museum that has a special emphasis on this collection. ([clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de](https://clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de/ausstellungen/beste-freunde))
When Animals Become Family Members
The exhibition builds on an experience that many visitors can immediately relate to: Pets are often emotional references today. In Naive Art, this closeness is not experienced theoretically but visually. The internationally represented self-taught artists show animals as companions, mirrors, and roommates in a poetically charged everyday world. The unadulterated intensity of the works makes their exhibition atmosphere so accessible and surprising. ([clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de](https://clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de/ausstellungen/beste-freunde))
Naive Art as an Independent Art Movement
Featured are works by André Bauchant, Erich Bödecker, Ilija Bosilj Bašičević, Max Raffler, Anna Mary Robertson, Adalbert Trillhaase, and Henryk Zegadlo. These names mark no footnote but an art-historically independent position within 20th-century art. The works are created without academic guidance and derive their formal freedom from this: clear contours, bright colors, narrative density, and a quirky image logic. The Clemens Sels Museum Neuss integrates these positions into its collection history and presents Naive Art as a serious part of modern art appreciation. ([clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de](https://clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de/ausstellungen/beste-freunde))
Restoration, Collection, and Educational Value
Particularly significant is that the museum, after careful restoration, makes accessible a central focus for the collection, which was particularly affected by water damage in May 2022. The exhibition thus combines curatorial precision with cultural-historical responsibility. The museum visit is also enhanced by the educational program: family tours, curator-led tours, public tours, and formats like Art & Cake offer different approaches to the exhibition and make the visit an aesthetic experience with educational depth. ([clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de](https://clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de/ausstellungen/beste-freunde))
Visit to the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss
The museum is located at Obertor in Neuss, open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 AM to 5 PM, and on Sundays and public holidays from 11 AM to 6 PM; on the last Thursday of the month until 8 PM. Admission costs 5 Euros for adults, while children and young people up to 21 years have free entry. The main building is accessible without steps, an elevator provides access to the special exhibitions, and the museum also offers inclusive tours as well as options in easy language and DGS. ([clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de](https://clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de/besuch))
Those interested in a smart, finely curated exhibition about human, animal, and the imagery of Naive Art will find here an exhibition with meaning, warmth, and art-historical substance. Best Friends! combines emotional closeness with professional precision – a visit is absolutely worthwhile in person. ([clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de](https://clemens-sels-museum-neuss.de/ausstellungen/beste-freunde))
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