Leon van den Eijkel arrived in Wellington from The Hague, Netherlands, in 1986. He now lives on Waiheke Island. Born 1940, Leon studied at The Hague's Royal Academy of Arts from 1958 to 1963. For the past twenty years van den Eijkel has produced light-boxes, sculptures, paintings and multimedia installations that use reflective surfaces and colours to nourish a continuing dialogue between his Dutch homeland and the Pacific.
Leon van den Eijkel has exhibited widely in Europe, the USA and New Zealand, where he is represented in many major public and private collections, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Wellington.
His major works include: an outdoor sculpture for the Keystone Trust Sculpture Project at The Farm, Auckland (1998); a wallwork installation, A walk in the clouds, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade at the New Zealand Embassy, The Hague (2004); a wallwork installation, Light of colour, for Brian R. Richards Ltd, Auckland (2205); Wellington urban forest for the Wellington Sculpture Trust (2007); and The smiling windmills for Avalon Park, Lower Hutt (2008).