Henry Orlik b. 1947

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Biography
Henry Orlik

Early Years

Henry Orlik was born in Ankum, Germany two years after the end of the Second World War, in 1947. His father, Jozef Orlik (1923-1998) was Polish and in the Allied Armed Forces under British Command during the war. His mother, Lucyna was of White Russian (Belarussian) origin and amidst the horrors of Nazi invasions had been deported for slave labour and put in a labour camp in Ankum, Lower Saxony, where she worked as a farm labourer. Jozef was part of the Polish forces who spearheaded the advance after D Day in the spring of 1945 that liberated the occupied countries of Northern France, Belgium, Holland and finally in May 1945 into Lower Saxony. The Orlik family came to England in 1948 and were initially itinerant, moving between different camps.

 

In early 1958 they arrived at Fairford Camp on the fringes of the Cotswolds, the largest of the many Polish Resettlement Camps operational from 1947 to 1958. They were here for two years and then were transferred to Daglingworth Camp in Gloucestershire. The young Orlik was sent to a Polish Boarding school in Hereford from the age of seven to twelve. The family stayed at Daglingworth until 1959, when, like many Polish families, they moved to Swindon.

In 1963 Orlik enrolled at Swindon Art College where he studied for three years, continuing his studies at Gloucestershire College or Art, Cheltenham between 1969 and 1972.

 

Career and Exhibitions 1970s

Orlik was already making a name for himself by 1971 when he showed People (gouache) at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1971. In 1972 he had a highly successful one man show at the world-renowned Surrealist Art Centre, Acoris, in Brook Street, London W1 when he was only twenty-five, from which all his paintings sold. An article in Apollo magazine stated, Orlik ‘has seized on a surrealistic idiom to display his hermetic vision of the irrational. Colours are muted and unearthly, giving a curious pallor to his enigmatic images, which are conveyed by innuendo and oblique implication. Intertwined female figures writhe in and out of one another in grotesque convoluted embrace culminating in a wild tangle of hair. Contrived theatrical stage sets occupied by the standard unexpected juxtapositioning of surrealistic devices are subject-matter for many pictures, as well as macabre landscapes. Orlik’s technical manner is to work over the surface with meticulous care, using minute strokes of a fine brush. The result is one of monotonous regularity that depersonalizes the surface but contributes to the eerie quality haunting his imagery.’

 

A review for the same exhibition in Art & Antiques magazine describes Orlik drawing much of his inspiration from ‘his heritage’ which was ‘regularly charged by frequent visits to his homeland of Byelo Russia, on the Polish- Russian border’. It continues: ‘His works – in both oil and acrylic, one of them on glass – are technically brilliant and his observations, while cynical, scarcely lack humour. Despite the dream-like quality imparted by a network of infantile squiggles which characterise his paintings, Mr. Orlik firmly rejects any label. “Surreal?” he said, taking a long look around the walls of the gallery. “They say I’m surrealistic. I just paint. It’s a lucky break, though, if it wasn’t for this show I’d still be teaching.” At his private view last week 80 percent of the pictures were snapped up. It would be false modesty on Mr. Orlik’s part if he attributed that solely to luck – and I don’t think his publicity people will be referring to him as unknown for very much longer.’

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