Jacqueline de Jong, influential avant garde artist, dies at

Jacqueline de Jong, influential avant garde artist, dies at 85

Born in 1939, De Jong had a six-decade career devoted to asking questions, and her art ranged from abstract to figurative and back again

Jacqueline de Jong, the Dutch artist and an influential figure of the 1960s avant garde, has died at the age of 85.

Known primarily for her paintings, De Jong also turned her radical outlook towards sculpture, printmaking, publishing and jewellery. Her work, which dealt with violence and eroticism – and engaged fully with the revolutionary politics of the era – earned her a reputation as one of the 20th century’s bravest and most honest autobiographical artists. When, at the opening of Tracey Emin’s Dutch retrospective in 2003, De Jong fell into Emin’s infamous tent artwork Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, the Guardian called it “an entirely appropriate, if unintentional, homage.”