MAURICE BLIK ATC. PPRBS. FRSA

Born in Amsterdam in 1939, by the age of four Maurice Blik was face to face with the questions and choices that philosophers, artists and religions have left unanswered. 

"Maurice Blik's sculpture expresses the intensity of feeling we experience when engulfed by life's great forces. He works with a courage and sensitivity that reflects his extraordinary journey through life, the integrity of his art reinforced by his own history.

The profound emotion he communicates in these bronze forms, their energy and tensions, are the reult of a very direct creative process. He uses the clay to draw out his internal imagery, much of which arises from indelible early memories, whose meaning has been amplified through the years.

His vision is of the fragile nature of life, yet within this fragility he explores the human qualities of endurance and dignity. The themes of emerging hope and a belief in the future are as strong in his sculpture as are the symbols of remembrance." John Smith - Landmark Communications

Maurice Blik has lived in England since being liberated from Bergen Belsen, where he was taken as a small child from his birthplace, Amsterdam. The ability to come to terms with this experience and to confront the face of humanity that he had witnessed, stayed silent in his life for some forty years. It finally found a voice in the passionate and exquisite sculpture which began to emerge in the late 1980s when he began by making a series of horses' heads. These noble and benevolent creatures posses an energy and a life force that seem just barely harnessed long enough to take their shape in the clay itself. Later he progressed to more  figurative work in which the irrepressible joy of life and the destructive, inpenetrable shadow of existence, are held together in a struggling unity.

Blik has had an extensive career in Art Education, teaching at all levels from Primary to Post Graduate. In the 1980s he began to develop his own artwork and in 1991 gave up teaching to work full time on sculpture. He has a post-graduate Art Teacher's Certificate with Distinction from London University. In 1996 he was elected President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Maurice Blik works in the UK and USA where he was awarded residency by the US Government as 'a person of extraordinary artistic ability'.

QUALIFICATIONS: 1960National Diploma (Sculpture) (NDD) Hornsey College of Art; 1969Art Teachers Certificate (ATC) University of London1992; Elected Fellow (FRBS) Royal Society of British Sculptors; 1996 Elected President (PRBS) Royal Society of British Sculptors; 1997Elected Fellow (FRSA) of the Royal Society of Arts.

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE:1960-1964 Art Teacher Secondary Schools; 1964-1968Lecturer Further Education Colleges; 1969-1980Lecturer in Art Education Hornsey College of Art and Design; 1980-1991Lecturer/Course Leader Visual Art Middlesex Polytechnic/University.

EXHIBITIONS AND GALLERIES INCLUDE:

Ongoing       Hooke Gallery Sag Harbour New York USA (since 2010)

Ongoing       Robert Bowman Modern London UK (since 2008)

Ongoing       Irving Gallery Palm Beach Florida USA (since 1995)

Ongoing       International Art Consultants (Art for Offices)London UK (since 1991)

2010           Masterpiece London (Robert Bowman Modern) UK

2008           Royal Society of British Sculptors - Solo Exhibition and artist’s talk, London UK

2007/8        Hannah Peschar Sculpture Park Surrey UK

2006           Chambers Gallery - Solo Exhibition London UK

1999           Blain's Fine Art (now Haunch of Venison) - Solo Exhibition London UK

1998/7        Pier Walk Sculpture - Invited Artist Chicago USA

1998           Hiscox Art Café London UK

1998           Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park- Invited Artist Chicago USA

                  National Trust Open Air Sculpture Exhibition - Invited Artist UK

1998           Royal Academy Summer Exhibition - Invited Artist London UK; and also 1997, 1993, and 1991        

1996           Museum Masters Collection Manhattan New York

1994           World Art Forum Davos Switzerland

1993           Chelsea Harbour ‘93 Sculpture - Invited Artist UK

1992           Herbert Read Gallery - Invited Artist Canterbury UK

1989           Cavalier Gallery Greenwich Connecticut USA

1988           Air Gallery Critics’ Choice selected by Mary Rose Beaumont UK

1985           Alwin Gallery - Solo Exhibition London UK

COMMISSIONS INCLUDE:

2009           University of Kentucky USA New Alexander Chandler Hospital

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS:

2006           "British Art: A Walk Round the Rusty Pier" by Julian Freeman Southbank Publishing UK 2006.

2005             "Modern British Sculpture" by Guy Portelli, publisher by Schiffer USA

2005           Illustrated feature article in The Times 2 newspaper London (30-9-05)

                  "Igniting the Spark"  (www.timesonline.co.uk)

1999              "The London Art World 1979-1999" by Heather Waddell, (London Art and Artists Guide 2000).

TESTIMONIALS:

"Blik's creativity has been both prodigious and profoundly moving. His huge bronze figures typically emerge from black metallic masses like butterflies from cocoons and stretch upwards, their fingers often just touching some mysterious shining object above them. You don't have to be an art critic to grasp the metaphor. This might be the artist emerging from his dark past. Or perhaps it is the indomitable human spirit rising from apparent devastation to reach for the beauty that will not be crushed."  Richard Morrison, The Times (London)

"He is an absolute pleasure to work with, inspirational, fearless, sensitive and above all, professional. He is an artist with integrity. Maurice Blik has kept his vision with single-minded focus; in my mind one of the best living figurative sculptors this country. There is not a project he can't undertake in any part of the world, on any scale." Andrew Hutchinson, Hutchinson & Hutchinson Art Consultants.