With this exhibition of the painting and graphic work of Jacqueline de Jong, WIELS highlights one of the crucial figures in the arts and art theory from the years of protest and revolt.

Born in the Netherlands in 1939, de Jong is a key figure of the European postwar avant-garde who is now looking back on a career spanning half a century. Her role in the Situationist International marked her early years in Paris in the 1960’s, where she was actively involved in the student and art protests. In parallel to her work as an editor and designer - most notably for The Situationist Times, which she founded and published from 1962 until 1967 - de Jong has developed a unique painterly practice. In its spontaneity, de Jong's expressive, often grotesque and excessive style follows the anti-academic and non-conformist aesthetic of the avant-garde.

The artist mixes exuberant collages of narrative, realistic fragments. Her tone can lean towards the absurd and enigmatic, but always with a desire for figuration and physical presence. Expressive yet realistic, her work exhibits uninhibited eroticism and sexual liberation.