Ek van Zanten

Ek van Zanten studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten on the Amsterdam Stadhouderskade from the age of fifteen, where he was taught by Piet Esser, a professor of sculpture, among others. From him, Ek Van Zanten learned to depict movement — movement caught at the right moment.
He worked a lot from models and made animal figures, took classes in the evenings. During the last two years of the course, he worked with both wood and stone.
He created large sculptures all over the Netherlands, including at the Dutch embassy in Washington.
In 1953 he received a grant for further studies at the École Nationale d’Architecture et des Arts Décoratifs (Higher School for Visual Arts) in Brussels. In 1955 Van Zanten participated in the third edition of the international sculpture exhibition in Park Sonsbeek, with his sculpture ‘Lady in Chair’. He won the Prix de Rome that year, which enabled him to work in Rome for two years. Moving back to the Netherlands, he initially lived in Amsterdam until he moved to Naarden in 1961.