Joop96

JOOP96 is the pop art artist name of Joop van der Wagt, a resident of The Hague born in 1956, who until 1998 was a civil servant at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, a volunteer firefighter in Zoetermeer and a freelance press photographer for, among others, the Haagsche Courant. At that time he made a splash with Indian ink drawings and as an amateur actor.

After the death of his father in January 1996, he started working with oil pastel on paper.

As of January 1998, JOOP96 stopped all work and hobbies to devote himself to art.

He painted various objects and held several exhibitions in galleries in The Hague, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

The typical JOOP96 style is imaginative, colorful, especially narrative and symbolic and cheerful in its own way.

Themes such as universe, birth and death, war and peace, reincarnation, individual developments and choices are subject to the subjective feelings of the artist and presented to the viewers with a humorous wink.