Bertus (Bart or Bert) Jonkers (1920–2001) was a distinctive and versatile Utrecht-based artist who worked as a painter, draftsman, etcher, sculptor, assemblage artist, poet, and builder of spatial installations. Although often classified as outsider art, he took classes at the Artibus art academy in Utrecht and developed a completely unique artistic style.
Jonkers grew up in Utrecht and initially worked as a house painter. After the Second World War, he definitively chose a life as an artist. His early work consisted of landscapes, still lifes, and portraits, but gradually his interest shifted towards abstraction, reliefs, object art, and assemblages. In doing so, he drew inspiration from spirituality, philosophy, and his continuous search for an ideal, harmonious world.
From the 1960s and 1970s onwards, he became known for his imaginative architectural constructions, miniature cities, and monumental installations. His most ambitious project was the City of Surrender, a continuously growing collection of self-built towers, temples, pyramids, and city fragments with which he created a personal utopian world. This unique oeuvre made him one of the most remarkable figures in Dutch outsider art.
In addition to his spatial work, Jonkers produced paintings, drawings, etchings, artist's books, and poetry. His work is characterized by imagination, spirituality, craftsmanship, and an inexhaustible urge to create new worlds. Today, he is regarded as one of the most idiosyncratic and intriguing Dutch artists of the twentieth century.
