Born in Amsterdam in 1912, Gerard de Leeuw decided early on that he wanted to be a sculptor and studied at various schools in Holland, including the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp under Isidore Opsomer, and in France, including in the studio of André Lhôte in Paris. He followed his family to South Africa in 1932, after his goldsmith father migrated to Cape Town in 1928 for health reasons. D