A gift for life

Year of work: 2010 | No: 7/8 | Including signed certificate by Kees Verkade


Kees Verkade (1941 –2020) was a Dutch artist and sculptor. He specialized in modeling the human form, with an emphasis on movement and emotion. Most of his sculptures are set in bronze. They depict a variety of people, including children, clowns, athletes, dancers, mothers, and lovers.


In 1964, he had his first exposition in the Haarlem Vleeshal (the former municipal meat market), now belonging to the Frans Hals Museum. This was a success and the Frans Hals Museum bought two of his sculptures. He specialised in carving and sculpture. In 1966 he sold his first public work Winkelen to the municipality of Haarlem in 1966. His big breakthrough came three years later when American photographer David Douglas Duncan bought several of his bronze statues and showed them to his friends. Verkade then proceeded to become an internationally recognized artist He moved to Monaco in the late 1970s. In 1979 he married baroness Ludmila von Falz-Fein. In 2013, he did a public sculpture of the late Rainier III, Prince of Monaco (1923–2005), which stands outside the Prince’s Palace of Monaco.



« Have done nothing else than create…Creation is my life, my soul, my everything »



Kees Verkade

13th june 2014