The Belgian Community in the Principality of Monaco, together with the two Belgian artists Canestraro and Depuydt, were keen to express their affection for Prince Rainier III by gifting him a large sculpture of Princess Grace, which was officially unveiled in 2004. The bronze statue, weighing almost...
The Belgian Community in the Principality of Monaco, together with the two Belgian artists Canestraro and Depuydt, were keen to express their affection for Prince Rainier III by gifting him a large sculpture of Princess Grace, which was officially unveiled in 2004. The bronze statue, weighing almost two tonnes, includes chips of coloured semi-precious stones. The Princess is shown seated on a circular marble plinth. A frog is depicted on the terrace on which the sculpture is installed.
Born in Rome in 1936, Livia Canestraro is a Belgian sculptor and painter of Italian heritage. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and won a UNESCO scholarship that took her to Brussels, to the Institut National Supérieur du Bois of La Cambre, where she met her future husband, the Belgian sculptor Stefaan Depuydt. In 1958, she was awarded the first prize for Sculpture by the Academy of Rome, the first prize for religious sculpture at the third National Exhibition of Young Artists in Rome, and the gold medal at the National Exhibition. Between 1959 and 1966, she received numerous awards in Italy and Germany. For over a decade, the couple have spent part of the year living in Monaco, where they work - together or separately - creating figures, personal objects, and abstract pieces. Born on 28 May 1937 in Gistel (Belgium), Stefaan Depuydt is a sculptor who creates monumental abstract works in stone or bronze. Having studied at the Institute Saint-Luc in Ghent from 1949 to 1956, and later at the workshop of Charles Leplae, and the Superior Institute of Decorative Arts of La Cambre in Brussels, he was awarded the West Flanders Prize for Sculpture in 1962, the same distinction bestowed on his wife Livia Canestraro in 1966.
