My Father Leo Cappel was a Great Artist

Channeling my father with an NFT Collection is something he would have loved

My father studied art at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and there are many stories about his works on his Facebook group. He also studied and taught in Paris.

On his return to Amsterdam, he joined an experimental art school called the Werkschuit, which was on a barge in Amsterdam. They taught mostly children who weren’t doing well at their normal school. It turned out to be a huge success. He also visited the Amsterdam prison one day a week to teach art and help with inmates’ rehabilitation.

In 1960 we emigrated to New Zealand for a better life with more opportunities. I always felt that was strange, but I think his war experiences as the son of a Jewish father and catholic mother were so horrific, that he needed a new start somewhere where he felt safe.

His talent was visible very early. He painted this watercolour, which I discovered when I returned to live in Holland with my grandparents at the age of 13. This painting was on the wall above my study desk. He painted this at the age of 13, a month after the end of WWII when Holland was liberated. At this stage, he had no art study at all. I’m not sure if he had even been to school for some of those years as he had been in hiding.

I would look at this painting, wondering about his life. The age difference between me now and he then, was only a year. I knew nothing about his youth.

So Leo moved to a new world, and it was good.

He very soon found an opportunity to channel his art skills, making dioramas in miniature to go to country schools and some that still enthral visitors to Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. This Maori quarry is an example. I felt he channelled artists like Mesdag, whose panorama circular painting almost gave me vertigo, it was so realistic in its dimensions with the real world.

He later moved to Auckland Museum where his work included designing and building the Bird Hall, where he created many dioramas, including this one which featured a Moa, New Zealand’s extinct flightless bird.

He collaborated with well-known artists at home in Titirangi with famous artists. They would share the costs of nude models and he sculpted hundreds of works, which are mostly found in private collections.

He was an avid SciFi fan and a lot of his work could have been found on the covers of steampunk novels, like this wall sculpture. One of his things was that he felt sculpture could live in new spaces like on walls, like this multimedia work.

He loved jazz and told me that he had played clarinet in a jazz band in Amsterdam.

He loved Satchmo, whose music graced our home in the early days.

His art grew more complex and included large installations, such as this one which lives in an artist’s retreat in Kerikeri, in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands.

He experimented with all sorts of media, even using lasers from retired supermarket bar code readers, which I recovered as I was selling them at the time, to highlight features from inside sculptures, and in his last days, he created a number of sculptures to protest against all manner of things, like man’s greed, pollution and climate change.

What for? He would ask.

He passed away last year, leaving my mother with bills and funeral costs. She is 92 and continues to live at home, which is surrounded by his work.

In order to help him support her with his legacy, we are creating a series of unique NFTs based around a sculpture he created called Molten Earth. Leo wanted his work to be easily accessible by anyone who liked his art. As a consequence, while some of his friends, who he had worked with in the past like Tony Fomison and Colin McCahon whose works are valued in the hundreds of thousands, his work was valued in thousands or even less.

We have combined 256 unique numbered NFTs of this sculpture, with a limited matching numbered PDF second edition of his book Like a Guardian, with a foreword by Karen Cappel, his widow. These NFTs share ownership of the actual sculpture. It is taking some time and so far 36 of the 256 have been added to the collection on Rarible.

Both because he wanted his art to be low cost, and the current reduction in the value of cryptocurrency, the floor price of the NFTs in this collection starts from as little as US$21 plus minting. Unlike many NFTs in the market today these will increase in value as it is a limited edition and he can’t create any more art himself. All proceeds go to his widow, to provide her with an income that allows her to take a friend or caregiver to lunch, and enjoy the simple things in life.

They aren’t all cheap, of course. Numbers 1-10 won’t be going for less the 1 ETH, but at the moment, the prices are crazy low, as he would have wanted them. The book alone, with only 256 unique numbered editions is a great read, and insight into the life of an international artist is worth way more.

If anyone one day purchases all of the NFTs, which can be resold, like any asset, they will become the owner of the original sculpture.

You could invest in a pixelated image of a monkey, which is likely to end up with no value at all, or one of these NFTs together with the autobiography of a holocaust survivor, where you will be well rewarded with the utility and helping him continue to support his wife.