About the artist

Joost de Jonge (1975) is a widely exhibited Dutch artist with work in a wide range of international collections. Solo exhibitions of his work were organised in Almería Spain, at AM-Gallery, Vromans Gallery in Friesland, The Netherlands, Bill Lowe Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia and at Alexander Salazar Fine Art in San Diego California. Furthermore he participated in many duo and group exhibitions as well as Art fairs in Milano and in Bologna (ARTE Fiera Bologna), with Galleria Studio Legale, to name but a few. He was educated at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and ’s-Hertogenbosch, and at the Universitat de Barcelona, and earned his BFA in painting with honors at the School of the Arts in Utrecht, followed by an artist residency at the Fundación Cultural Knecht-Drenth in Callosa d’en Sarrià, Spain. He has been a guest lecturer at the VU University in Amsterdam (visual Art and the American Poet, MA) speaking about his ekphrasis project.

Aetas Aurea

These works are to be shown in Opatija at the Paviljon Juraj šporer in the exhibition  “Aetas Aurea” from 03-07-2026 to 27-07-2026. The exhibition is curated by art historian and former museum director Mr. Ervin Dubrović. It is an artistic dialogue with antiquity, with its lush forms, patterns and mythology. The search for the Golden Fleece is interpreted by the artist as a search for truth, the spiritual and original.

Local legend has it that the argonauts started their journey landward here on the coast of the Adriatic. Also it is common knowledge that the true origin of the King Arthur legend is buried in Croatia and refers to the second century “Dux Bellorum” Lucius Artorius Castus - a Roman war lord, so to speak - who was listed as procurator of a province called Liburnia of which the main military camp was situated in Tarsatica (present day Rijeka/Fiume). 

The originality also refers to the origin of forms as researched by Alois Riegl in his Stilfragen or Problems of Style/Foundations for a History of Ornament. To the artist, the most important of his notions is the will of art/Kunstwollen.  With his organic forms loosely tied to the realism of our everyday world and implicitly connected to the roots of Jungian archetypes, he conveys a life of forms of inherent freedom and connectivity. 

Joost de Jonge
April 2026, Bourbonne-Les-Bains