Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/590511
M other 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 only a few months ago 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 earlier this year 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 US 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, S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 6 9 Once a Nazi resistance fighter, Dutch-born artist Loet Vanderveen saw the carnage of war and then sculpted wild critters as an antidote. Todd Wilkinson rt & Etc. l L oet Vanderveen's bronze of a tiger features a jeweled amber patina and the Cape buffalo a patina of black pearl. Produced in editions of 750, each piece can be finished in the collector's choice of patina. Visit www.callofafrica.com. L