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Henry Orlik (b. 1947): A Rediscovery of Genius: Locked-up Dreams & Masterworks

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  • In 1974 Henry Orlik’s (b.1947) work was included alongside great Surrealist artists such as René Magritte, Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dali in Surrealist Masters (Acoris, The Surrealist Art Centre, Brook Street, London). In the years following the exhibition Orlik created some of his most exciting and dynamic work but due to his increasingly reclusive lifestyle many of these works have remained hidden and unseen.
  • Orlik's work explores the breadth of human experience. His paintings, formed of thousands of tiny, spiralled brushstrokes, which Orlik refers...
    Henry Orlik, August 1982 
     

     Orlik's work explores the breadth of human experience. His paintings, formed of thousands of tiny, spiralled brushstrokes, which Orlik refers to as his ‘excitations’, suffuse the solid and often monumental forms depicted with energy and vitality. Orlik took the term excitations from his reading on quantum physics as the term is used to describe the excited state of an entity reacting to a stimulus. Like atoms and electrons, the elements of Orlik’s work are full of energy and motion; undulating waves, rippling fabric, moving aircraft and writhing bodies create the impression that the canvas is in the process of rearranging itself into some new scene or figure.

     

    These dream-like paintings examine the fluid nature of time, space, memory and experience and are not bound by rules of reality. His extraordinary, sensual and witty images cohere into seemingly rational worlds which somehow, by a trick of memory perhaps or déjà vu, seem strangely familiar and intelligible.

    Recent exhibitions and scholarship have examined the spread of Surrealism beyond the boundaries of interwar France, exploring the influence of Surrealist artists and their ideals on postwar, international artists in Britain and beyond. Whilst André Breton’s Surrealist movement died with the onset of the Second World War artists such as Henry Orlik demonstrate that the artistic impulse to depict the unconscious and surreal extended further into the 20th century.

    • Henry Orlik, THE END
      Henry Orlik, THE END Sold
    • Henry Orlik, CANNON BALLOONS
      Henry Orlik, CANNON BALLOONS Sold
    • Henry Orlik, THE PARTING
      Henry Orlik, THE PARTING Sold
    • Henry Orlik, BEAUTY AND SHARKS
      Henry Orlik, BEAUTY AND SHARKS Sold
    • Henry Orlik, GREEN STILETTO
      Henry Orlik, GREEN STILETTO Sold
    • Henry Orlik, WIN OR LOSE
      Henry Orlik, WIN OR LOSE Sold
    • Henry Orlik, FRIENDS
      Henry Orlik, FRIENDS Sold
    • Henry Orlik, REST
      Henry Orlik, REST Sold
  • Henry Orlik, SURREAL LANDSCAPE
     
    Artworks

    Henry Orlik

    SURREAL LANDSCAPE

    Orlik seems to create his version of Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510, Museo del Prado, Madrid) in which he employs a similar, although more muted, colour scheme of washed-out lime green and pinks. He organises an unearthly, nightmarish, toy-like garden, an exaggerated, strange fantasy, in which he uses child-, clown- and circus-like imagery. The garden is walled in like a flimsy, barbed fortress (like an old Wild West fort) on the left and at the back of the painting, the garden is enclosed by a crocheted fence, penetrated by an archway with a threadbare knitted gate covering the entrance. The barbed wall suggests that it is for keeping the inhabitants in rather than others out and the insubstantial crocheted wall suggests it would be easy to break-out, if anyone realised or chose to. Above the scene, geometric polystyrene clouds hang in the sky. The garden, like a macabre children’s play-area, is filled with strange, almost-recognisable, oddly-sized shapes. Objects that should be small are large and larger objects small. At the left side of the painting the flimsy wall creates a long shadow; at the front, in the shadows, steps lead down into the darkness of arched tunnels, dungeon or crypt. A bunch of wrapped flowers, which is, in fact, one rose lies like a cornucopia at the front of the painting, its twisted end appears to be a white-gloved clown’s hand which proffers a flower with two leaves, perhaps an offering to whatever will emerge from below. 

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  • Henry Orlik, BEVERLY HILLS
     
    Artworks

    Henry Orlik

    BEVERLY HILLS

    Beverly Hills Interior shows a room in the funky Beverly Hills home of ‘James Coburn’s ex-wife’. The interior has a funky 70s vibe, and the room is accessed by a long green staircase which comes through a doorway between two brown cone-shaped pillars. A large picture window has views out onto rocky mountains which exacerbates the sense of descending in the painting. A spherical light hangs from the ceiling with coloured cocoon-like objects hanging from it. A table covered with a brown cloth, which resembles a tree-trunk, is placed in the centre of a rounded, lowered section in the room; a strange claw-like object, resembling a bunch of three bananas, rests on the table. 

    James Coburn (1928-2002) was married to Beverly Kelly from 1959-1979 and they lived in Beverly Hills in a Spanish Colonial-style house. Coburn was with Lynsey de Paul (1948-2014), the English singer-songwriter, for four years from late 1978 until 1981 and they too shared a house in Beverly Hills. It is, therefore, more likely that this was the home of Lynsey de Paul and Coburn as Orlik was in Los Angeles in 1980, when the couple were together. (De Paul was famous for her talent as a singer-songwriter, but also for her beauty-spot above her mouth, see Orlik’s painting Friends – pure speculation.)

    • Henry Orlik, KITE
      Henry Orlik, KITE Sold
    • Henry Orlik, OASIS
      Henry Orlik, OASIS Sold
  • Contact
    • Henry Orlik, DEFEAT (AEROPLANE OVER LA)
      Henry Orlik, DEFEAT (AEROPLANE OVER LA) Sold
    • Henry Orlik, DREAM
      Henry Orlik, DREAM Sold
    • Henry Orlik, END OF AN AFFAIR
      Henry Orlik, END OF AN AFFAIR Sold
    • Henry Orlik, FAIRGROUND
      Henry Orlik, FAIRGROUND Sold
    • Henry Orlik, HENPECKED
      Henry Orlik, HENPECKED Sold
    • Henry Orlik, KITE
      Henry Orlik, KITE Sold
    • Henry Orlik, LOVERS
      Henry Orlik, LOVERS Sold
    • Henry Orlik, MOTHER FLIGHT
      Henry Orlik, MOTHER FLIGHT Sold
    • Henry Orlik, PARACHUTE
      Henry Orlik, PARACHUTE Sold
    • Henry Orlik, SELF PORTRAIT
      Henry Orlik, SELF PORTRAIT Sold
    • Henry Orlik, SUKA
      Henry Orlik, SUKA Sold
    • Henry Orlik, TIME
      Henry Orlik, TIME Sold

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