Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Maurice Blik artist

Maurice Blik was born into a Jewish family in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 1939 and is a Holocaust survivor. After the war ended in 1945, he settled in London and his traumatic experiences continue to inform the sculptures he has created since the 1980s. He was elected President of the Royal British Society of Sculptors (1996–97), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1997 and has exhibited widely in Britain and the USA.

Born: 1939 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Died:

Year of Migration to the UK: 1945


Biography

Sculptor Maurice Blik is Jewish and was born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands on 21 April 1939. During the Second World War the family was separated in 1943 when his father was sent to Auschwitz, while Maurice, his mother, sisters and grandmother were moved to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, from where, in April 1945, he was taken on the notorious ‘lost train’ across Germany and liberated by Russian Cossacks on 15 April 1945. He subsequently settled in England in 1945, and his traumatic experiences later informed the sculptures he created in Britain in the 1980s. In 1960 he gained a National Diploma in Sculpture from Hornsey College of Art, followed by an Art Teacher's Certificate from the University of London in 1969. In 1980 he held a joint exhibition, Paintings by Enid Grizzard and Sculpture by Maurice Blik, at Ben Uri Gallery in Dean Street, Soho, followed by his first solo exhibition at the Alwin Gallery, London in 1985. He has since exhibited widely both within the UK and the USA, including participating in several Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions (1991, 1993, 1997, 1998 and 2021) and holding solo exhibitions at Blain's Fine Art, London in 1999, and The Royal British Society of Sculptors in London in 2008. In 1992 Blik was awarded resident status by the USA Government under the category 'person of extraordinary artistic ability', and was elected President of the Royal British Society of Sculptors (1996–97), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1997. Since 2008 he has been represented by Bowman Sculpture, London, who hosted his 2019 exhibition, one of the events in arts festival Insiders/Outsiders, celebrating the contribution of refugees from Nazism to British culture.

Blik has been the subject of films and documentaries including The Art of Remembering for the BBC, directed by Tim Robinson (1998); the performance film Second Breath, directed by Gillian Lacey (2007), Hollow Dog (2017) by Clive
Martin of YaMedia; Belsen Our Story (Atlantic Productions), for the BBC, and The Last Survivors, also for the BBC, directed by Arthur Cary (2019). Blik has a number of public sculptures in the UK and USA, including At First Light(Donnington Valley, Berks),Renaissance (1995, East India Docks, London); Behold (2000, Middlesex University, London); Every Which Way (2017, The National Memorial to the Evacuation WW2, Staffordshire); Splishsplash (2005, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, USA); and Second Breath (2011, Chandler Hospital, University of Kentucky, USA).

Related books

  • Maurice Blik, The Art of Survival: Artobiography (Heavypress iNK, 2022)
  • Maurice Blik (London: Bowman Sculpture, 2018)
  • Julian Freeman, British Art: A Walk around the Rusty Pier (London: South Bank Publishing, 2006)
  • Guy Portelli, Modern British Sculpture (Atglen: Schiffer Publications, 2005)
  • Maurice Blik (London: Blains Fine Art, 1999)
  • Maurice Blik (Fort Pierce: The Artist, 1994)

Related organisations

  • Hornsey College of Art (student and staff member)
  • University of London (student)
  • Royal British Society of Sculptors (president, 1996–97)
  • Middlesex Polytechnic/University (lecturer)
  • Royal Society of Arts (fellow)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Bowman Sculpture Gallery's stand, The British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery (2019)
  • Bowman Sculpture Gallery (2019)
  • Maurice Blik Plasters: The Artist at Eighty, Sculpt Gallery, Great Braxted, England (2019)
  • Bowman Sculpture Gallery's stand, Art Miami (2018)
  • Maurice Blik, Bowman Sculpture, New Sculpture London (2018)
  • Bowman Sculpture Gallery's stand, Art Miami (2017)
  • Maruice Blik, Arucad University of Fine Arts, Cyprus (2017)
  • Bowman Sculpture Gallery's stand, Fine Art Asia, Hong Kong (2013)
  • Face 2013, The Society of Portrait Sculptors, London (2013)
  • Into the Light, Sculpt Gallery, Great Braxted, England (2013)
  • ArtBeat, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, England (2012)
  • Bowman Sculpture Gallery's stand, Masterpiece, London (2010)
  • Royal Society of Sculptors, London (2008)
  • Hannah Peschar Sculpture Park, Surrey, England (2007-2008)
  • Blain's Fine Art (now Haunch of Venison), London (1999)
  • Pier Walk Sculpture, Chicago, USA (1997 & 1998)
  • Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park, Chicago, USA (1998)
  • National Trust Open Air Sculpture Exhibition (1998)
  • Museum Masters Collection, New York, USA (1996)
  • Irving Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida, USA (1996–2001)
  • World Art Forum, Davos, Switzerland (1994)
  • Chelsea Harbour '93 Sculpture, London (1993)
  • Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2021, 1998, 1997, 1993, 1991)
  • Cavalier Gallery, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA (1989)
  • Solo exhibition, Alwin Gallery, London (1985)
  • Paintings by Enid Grizzard and Sculpture by Maurice Blik, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1980)
  Maurice Blik
   
Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Maurice Blik]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Maurice Blik] in the Ben Uri Library