The Most-Collected Wildlife Sculptor of the Modern Age
May 6, 2021
SCA Articles
Once a Nazi resistance fighter, Dutch-born artist Loet Vanderveen saw the carnage of war and sculpted wild critters as an antidote.
Mother Nature is the finest sculptor. Could a human really invent creatures more inspiring than an elephant or rhino, wild mountain sheep or elk? I’m just trying to accentuate the beauty she has given us. Believe me, if you let her into your soul, she can save your life.
That’s how Loet Vanderveen described his role as an artist, elaborating about the impact of nature on his life and the extraordinary succession of events that shaped it.
“Loet is a legend,” said his close friend Ross Parker, founder of Call of Africa’s Native Visions Fine Art Galleries in Naples and Jupiter, Florida. “Everything that he’s lived through, everything that he’s seen, coupled with all the great art he’s created as a result of personal experience. What he brings to wildlife art is authenticity and originality. Once he’s gone, there’ll be no one else like him again.”
Indeed, Parker’s words ring today with poignancy, like a eulogy.
When Vanderveen died at age 94 in Big Sur, California, he was still turning out innovative designs. He held the distinction of being the most-collected wildlife sculptor of the modern age. Oil sheiks and European royalty acquired his exquisite big game animals and birds; so, too, did the late U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, actress Mary Tyler Moore, and Indianapolis 500 champion A. J. Foyt. But most of all, to Vanderveen’s delight, thousands of modest, working-class folk had the Dutch-American’s colorful bronzes.
Cosmopolitan and universal, his works could adorn a Texas ranch hacienda as easily as a log home in the Rockies or Adirondacks, a fishing cabin by the lake, or an office in a skyscraper made of steel and glass. They were objects of sublime refinement and yet they never betrayed the secrets of the artist. Born in 1921, Vanderveen wasn’t a tall or brawny man but in the early 1940s he had been unshakably defiant as a member of the underground resistance battling the Nazis in the Second World War.
Although he spoke out against war as he grew older, his views were not those of a soft and pampered pacifist. He had clutched machine guns and worked alongside explosives specialists in fighting an enemy that had rounded up neighbors and sent them off to concentration camps never to be seen again.
When I asked him where nature fit in, he shared the story of a zoo in Rotterdam, Holland.
“As a boy, the Rotterdam Zoo had been a sanctuary, my favorite place in the world. I credit its influence with giving me the dream of going on safari in Africa,” Vanderveen reflected. In fact, as a boy he got a job tending to the animals and bottle-fed a lion cub, bonding with the big cat.
Rotterdam took a pounding from the Germans.
“After bombing raids, the zoo, like much of the city, was pretty much destroyed,” he said. Elephants and rhinos and other big animals that weren’t killed or maimed by the blasts were found roaming loose inside the zoo gates. A seal had been propelled out of its water enclosure into a canal and a chimpanzee, shell-shocked, tried to find shelter in a pub.
Authorities shot all the predators such as tigers, bears, and the adult lion he had befriended to ironically spare them suffering and, secondarily, to ensure they didn’t escape.
“It was a sight of chaos and pain I’ll never forget, but the survival and resilience of some animals also helped people heal.
It was a metaphor that has stayed with him for 70 years. The German invasion drove Vanderveen, half-Jewish and orphaned from his parents, underground though he was captured by the Nazis and thrown in prison. Somehow able to get out, he joined the armed resistance, hooking up with Dutch fighters in Vichy, France, and then decamped to the Dutch West Indies before heading to London. There, he received a medal of valor from exiled Dutch Queen Wilhelmina.
While in England, Vanderveen enlisted in the Royal Air Force with hopes of becoming a bomber pilot or navigator, but vision problems stopped him from being assigned to a plane. Following the war, he vowed to devote the rest of his life to restoring the majesty of nature in people’s lives, even if they couldn’t make contact with actual animals.
Using his skills as a draftsman, he landed jobs in Zurich, Switzerland, London and New York City with clothing designers. One of the biggest mistakes of his life, he said, was turning down a job offer to collaborate with a young entrepreneur in Paris named Christian Dior. Dissatisfied with the clothing industry, Vanderveen would eventually head west in America, settling along the rugged Pacific Coast where he erected a studio. In the meantime, his talent in creating tactile objects earned him three years of mentorship from Fong Chow, the renowned curator of the Far Eastern department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1960 Vanderveen started producing one-of-a-kind wildlife creations in ceramic; 15 years later he moved to bronze, and then expanded to marble from the same Italian quarry used by Michelangelo.
Vanderveen rejected traditional dark classical patinas and made his creations available in a palette range of (mostly) pastel hues. Instead of collectors having to find the right place in their homes to display them, the versatility of Vanderveen’s work gave them options.
“You see a lot of wildlife art that usually is very realistic and detailed,” Vanderveen said. “I want to achieve a totally different effect and try to convey the essence of the animal or group of animals with a minimal amount of detail.”
Many high-end collectors are familiar with Vanderveen’s acclaimed series of pieces created in fine crystal for Baccarat, hence called “the Safari Collection.” His bronzes range from small portrayals that one can hold in the hand to monuments adorning the grounds of private and corporate clients.
“It’s remarkable when you think of just how prolific Loet’s wildlife sculpture is around the world,” said Parker, whose has sold more Vanderveens than any other gallery in the world.
“I know people who have dozens of Vanderveens and some who will tell you it’s the only piece of sculpture they own,” he said. “One of the things he values is giving collectors a choice. Where else can you purchase a piece of sculpture that is available in a palette of colors to match the decor of your home or trophy room?”
Vanderveen had traveled widely across southern Africa, observing the big cats, rhinos, elephants and Cape buffalo that would become inspirations for his art. He was dumbstruck by the accelerating problem of poaching rhinos and elephants for their horns and ivory. Over the years, he and Parker worked together to earmark a percentage of sales to conservation projects on the ground.
“This is a terrible moment in time,” Vanderveen said. “The wild places that have inspired us are fast becoming fragmented islands shrinking in size all around. What will be left for the young people?”
Following his experience in World War II, Vanderveen didn’t have it in him to hunt but he praised the efforts of many friends who were sportsmen and sportswomen. Just a few months before he passed on after suffering a fall, Vanderveen told me that he believed animal sculpture is akin to modern totem poles for the 21st century.
Refusing to give in to pessimism, he clung to hope. Once wildlife populations in North America had been decimated by slaughter and loss of habitat, but animals were brought back. Conservation, he told me, is the defining issue of our time.
“Society won’t act unless there is awareness, but equally as important as awareness is connection. The beliefs that come from the heart can be unstoppable motivators, and I believe strongly in the power of art to solidify our bond to nature and each other.”