Origin of Ego, the Artist behind the Lego Man

10/26/2011 (2:00pm)

Is it a bird? No. Is it a plane? No. It’s Ego Leonard, the giant, yellow smiling Lego man that washed ashore the beautiful Siesta Beach yesterday. After a bit of digging in the sand, Sarasota Visual Art suggests that the work of Ego Leonard was created by Dutch guerrilla artist, and 2011 Sarasota Chalk Festival featured artist, Leon Keer.

Lego Man, Ego Leonard — Credit: http://www.egoleonard.nl/

Keer, born in Utrecht, The Netherlands (where Ego mysteriously appeared on the Zandvoort beach in the Netherlands in 2007 among many other locations) in 1970, is an enthusiastic 3D street painter, and 2D artist. Paintings of Keer’s work appear on the site http://www.st-artgallery.com/artists/ego-leonard.html where you can purchase a part of the Ego Leonard phenomena for a couple thousand dollars. The website www.egoleonard.com is registered under Keer’s personal email address, the contact for Keer’s other site featuring his beautifully rendered and detailed works at www.dufois.nl. In addition, Keer is “friends” with Ego Leonard on Facebook, and both are mutual friends with Sarasota Chalk Festival founder, chairwoman, and now master of marketing, Denise Kowal.

ego.sarasota1-1024x802 — (sketch) Terracotta army discovered in Sarasota by Leon Keer - "The painting will not be an attampt to change the history, but rather to give something informative to the public and question the existing environment of its opportunism and society control."

Don’t miss the Sarasota Chalk Festival and Leon Keer’s work coming to downtown Sarasota, Nov. 1-7, 2011. To view Keer’s concept sketch for this year’s Chalk Festival theme “Pavement Through the Ages” visit http://www.chalkfestival.com/?p=3487