{"id":273889,"date":"2025-11-10T09:08:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T09:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/273889\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T09:08:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T09:08:13","slug":"surrealist-artist-henry-orlik-feels-violated-over-missing-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/273889\/","title":{"rendered":"Surrealist artist Henry Orlik feels ‘violated’ over missing works"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WinsorWinsor Birch<\/p>\n

Henry Orlik now lives at his late mother’s home in Swindon<\/p>\n

A rediscovered surrealist artist who has had dozens of his works go missing says it has left him feeling violated.<\/p>\n

Henry Orlik, 78, was evicted from his social housing flat in London in 2022 while he was recovering from a stroke in hospital, which is when the paintings disappeared.<\/a><\/p>\n

Now living back in his childhood home in Swindon, his work there is being carefully catalogued and some of it has been sold in exhibitions, altogether making more than \u00a32m.<\/p>\n

Usually reclusive and recently recovering from illness, Orlik has only recently felt well enough to give interviews. He said after realising the paintings were gone, “you feel violated”, adding: “I feel physically sick.”<\/p>\n

Orlik rose to fame in the 1970s before deciding to leave the art world.<\/p>\n

For decades the artist worked away in his flat, stacking and rolling up canvases and drawings.<\/p>\n

But in the past couple of years he has made a comeback, with his art selling for millions and featuring in private galleries in London and New York.<\/p>\n

\"HenryHenry Orlik<\/p>\n

Depictions of Marilyn Monroe are within the missing paintings<\/p>\n

Orlik has already put up a \u00a350,000 reward<\/a> to find all the paintings, but they have yet to appear.<\/p>\n

The work represents years of the artist’s life.<\/p>\n

“The titles aren’t important, but I remember them. I worked on them for a long time. They’re in me,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There’s meaning behind an image. That’s why I painted it, there’s a reason.”<\/p>\n

After discovering they were gone, he said: “You feel violated. I feel physically sick because it’s something unusual, not real.” <\/p>\n

He said getting them back would mean everything.<\/p>\n

\"HenryHenry Orlik<\/p>\n

Orlik adopts a number of different styles and is very precise with his work, as seen in his huge canvases of the Battle of L’Aquila<\/p>\n

His surrealist work is unusual and many of the paintings, some of which are huge, would have taken months to complete.<\/p>\n

Orlik uses tiny brush strokes, with much of his work made up of small squiggles he calls excitations. It is also very precise and accurate.<\/p>\n

Art dealer and expert Grant Ford, who has the missing pieces listed on his website, said some were “iconic”.<\/p>\n

“There’s a picture of Marilyn Monroe, which is very beautiful. There’s a picture of a cowboy. Many of these pictures that have gone missing by Henry are just brilliant. They’re icons.”<\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/p>\n

Paul and Helen Michael own one of Orlik’s pieces and have loaned it to a public exhibition<\/p>\n

After selling his paintings over the past 18 months in London, New York and in Marlborough, Wiltshire, Orlik now has his first solo exhibition in a publicly funded gallery.<\/p>\n

Some of those who have already bought his work have loaned it out to the exhibition at Museum and Art Swindon.<\/p>\n

One of those is Helen Michael, who calls the piece she bought “very emotional”.<\/p>\n

“The colours, the detail, the imagination, I could look at it for a very long time. You just think, how how did he do this?”<\/p>\n

While initially it was thought there were about 78 missing artworks<\/a>, a re-count has found it likely to be a much higher number.<\/p>\n

Orlik is pleased his work is getting more appreciation, but finding his missing paintings is what is most important to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Winsor Birch Henry Orlik now lives at his late mother’s home in Swindon A rediscovered surrealist artist who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-273889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}