BIOGRAPHY

Drawing since 3 and having his first public art exhibition curated by teachers at age 4, Romeo Varga is a multi award winning international self taught artist whose technical precision and illustrative diversity has led him to be commissioned by global clients including Microsoft, Samsung, L’Oréal, Westfield, Johnson & Johnson, Lexus, Audi, Virgin, Fox Sports, NewsCorp and Deloitte. His work has been published in print magazines, newspapers and online publications across three continents including the font cover of Australia’s leading car magazine Wheels and London’s Evening Standard newspaper. He has been recognised for his artistic excellence with awards and accolades in North America, Europe and Australia, and has exhibited his fine art paintings in iconic art capitals including Berlin, Paris, Milan, London and New York.

Romeo Varga art artist painting — Romeo Varga’s photorealistic mermaid painting which decorates his personal home gallery is an interpretation of an animated GIF he saw online (2022).

A commercial illustrator and painter who was born in former Yugoslavia, Romeo spent his teenage years in Germany before migrating to Sydney where he completed a Bachelor of Interior Design (Honours) and even studied to become an Australian police officer —all the while working as a freelance artist.

Since 2013 Romeo has been represented as an illustrator by Australia’s leading creative talent agency (The Jacky Winter Group); and following his relocation back to his home continent in 2019, Romeo has been regularly commissioned by European agencies to create artworks for major brand campaigns and government projects. In late 2023 he transitioned into the gaming industry as a 2D Artist and Art Director.

Romeo had his first solo exhibition in Australia when he was just 18 years old, his artworks can be found in private collections across continents, and one of his hand draw ink works is also permanently hanging in a 16th century castle in France.

He has received impressive endorsements for his paintings by esteemed art world figures in London, New York and Sydney, including the esteemed British art critic and historian from Oxford University Anthony Fawcett who is renowned for his collaborations with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Andy Warhol.

Romeo tends to enjoy juxtaposing tranquility with bizarreness in his scenes, and despite working in a range of markedly different art series, his disdain of mediocrity and the mundane is evident in every single work he creates.

JOURNEY

Romeo Varga began drawing at the age of 3 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where his natural artistic abilities were swiftly noticed by his kindergarten teachers who curated his first public art exhibition when he was just 4 years old.

Romeo Varga art fine art — Romeo Varga’s work ‘Childhoods in Bosnia’ (2020) will be exhibited in Milan and New York in 2023.

At the age of 12, Romeo moved to Germany as a refugee and attended mechanic school for a year where he relished in taking apart engines and dissecting mechanical elements of cars. Little did Romeo realise at the time, but this intricate knowledge he developed on how mechanical elements function, paved the way for him to draw technical and mechanical art with a unique accuracy and precision that is unrivalled in the creative field.

Romeo Varga’s bold black and white visuals commissioned by Skoda to emphasise the Octavia 90TSI’s features, appeared (with his very own hand) in the brand’s TV commercial (2013)

Due to visa technicalities, at age 16 Romeo could no longer attend school in Germany. This twist of fate in fact afforded him the luxury of being able to master his illustrative craft, as he spent the next nine months fanatically producing comics day and night, uninterrupted, in what he fondly refers to today as his very own Apocalypse-Now-kinda-chapter.

Romeo and his family relocated to Australia when he was in Year 11, where Australia was as quick as Europe to recognise his gift for creative expression, and after just 3 months of arriving, he was invited by The Sydney College of the Arts for an Artist in Residency program which included exhibiting his work in their campus gallery. By the time he had graduated with a Bachelor of Interior Design at the University of Technology Sydney in 2003, Romeo had already turned down a job at Disney as a 2D animator, and had been working as an exhibition display designer for five years.

Romeo Varga was commissioned by Australia’s leading car magazine to illustrate the front cover of their November Issue (2019)

…Fast forward a decade, and Romeo has worked in furniture design, industrial design, and even managed to study a Bachelor of Policing whilst continuing to hone his artistic gifts working as a freelancer, before joining the Jacky Winter Group in 2013 as an agency-represented professional illustrator.

Romeo Varga’s matte painting was selected as the Opening Art for an international ecology conference held in Sydney (2015)

Cut to 2023 and Romeo is celebrating his 10th year of Artist Representation with the Jacky Winter Group in Australia. He is also regularly commissioned to create concept visuals in Europe.

Romeo’s recently acquired residence on the Adriatic Sea with its abundance of wild beauty and classical medieval architecture has inspired him to not only reunite with his past passion for painting, but also to artistically connect with parts of himself previously unexplored. Romeo’s love of cloth, classical beauty and angelic creatures which manifests resoundingly in his new Montenegrin fine art series, was shaped in his formative years by ethereal paintings and tapestries adorning his mother and grandmother’s homes.