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A gift to the board. That is what these three pelicans in bronze by Pieter Starreveld are. The staff of the Olveh (the Onderlinge Levensverzekeringmaatschappij Eigen Hulp of 1879) gave them as a gift in 1968 on the occasion of the construction of a new head office for AGO, a merger of De Algemeene Friesche, the Groot-Noordhollandsche and the Olveh, on Kortenaerkade. AGO then merged with ENNIA in 1983 to form Aegon. That is why the statue is located on the Aegonplein next to the head office.

Starreveld was no stranger to the commission circuit. He graduated in 1932 from the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam with figurative work. The famous Jan Bronner was his most important teacher here. Starreveld's first commissions were for works of art on and in buildings. After the Second World War, he made many war monuments. When he moved to a spacious studio in Amersfoort in the 1950s, he also began to cast bronze sculptures himself according to the lost wax method (cire perdu). Before that, he had mainly carved sculptures directly from wood or stone. Female nudes and animal figures were his favourite subjects.

It is not clear whether the Olveh staff commissioned the sculptor to make a pelican or whether he chose the bird himself. What is certain is that the insurer's logo has long featured the image of a pelican with young. In early Christianity, but also in folk cultures before that, it was thought that pelicans fed their young with the blood from their parents' own pecked open breast. That is why this bird is seen as a symbol of charity and sacrifice. Yet Starreveld's sculpture does not refer to this. He chose to stack three adult specimens. By placing them diagonally above each other, it seems as if they are flying away together. Towards the - assured - future.