Cor Blok
Cor Blok | |
---|---|
Battle of the Hornburg II, which he sold to J. R. R. Tolkien | |
Born | Cornelis Blok 18 February 1934 The Hague, Netherlands |
Died | 21 May 2021 | (aged 87)
Alma mater | Academy of Fine Arts, Rotterdam |
Known for | A Tolkien Tapestry; "Barbarusia" |
Notable work | "Battle of the Hornburg" |
Style | Minimalist |
Cornelis Blok (1934—2021), known as Cor, was a Dutch artist and art history teacher. He became well-known as a
Life
Cornelis "Cor" Blok was born in The Hague, Netherlands on 18 February 1934. He studied at Rotterdam's Academy of Fine Arts.[1]
From 1956, he worked at Haags Gemeentemuseum, teaching art history and cataloguing the museum's Piet Mondrian collection. He also taught at Leiden University. He was influenced by modern artists including the Italian metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico, the German Dadaist Max Ernst, the Swedish multimedia artist Öyvind Fahlström, the British painter David Hockney, the Russian painter and critic Wassily Kandinsky, the Swiss-German Paul Klee, and the American R. B. Kitaj. He invented "Barbarusia", a fantasy realm with its own art and history, from 1953 to 1958; he held an exhibition of his Barbarusia drawings and structures in 1960 at the Haags Gemeentemuseum. From 1958, he made numerous paintings of scenes from The Lord of the Rings in a "quasi-primitive", minimalist style. He wrote and translated several illustrated books of art history. In later life, he created the surrealist comic strip album The Iron Parachute.[1][2]
A retrospective exhibition of his artistic output was planned for 2020, but this was postponed because of the
Illustrating Tolkien
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c2/Rivendell_by_Cor_Blok.jpg/260px-Rivendell_by_Cor_Blok.jpg)
Blok became interested in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings. He met Tolkien in 1961, showing him five of his Middle-earth paintings. Tolkien admired these, purchasing "Battle of the Hornburg II".[a] Blok went on to create over 100 paintings of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, selling many of them. In 2011, Pieter Collier collected images of all of these paintings that he could trace, publishing them in the book A Tolkien Tapestry.[4][5]
The Tolkien scholar Daniel Howick, reviewing the book for
Works
Written
- 1967: Beeldspraak ("Metaphors").
- 1974: Catalogue of Piet Mondrian. Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
- 1975: Geschichte der abstrakten Kunst 1900-1960 (History of Abstract Art 1900-1960). (Illustrated). Cologne: DuMont Schauburg.
- 2003: Beeldvertalen ("Translating Images"). Amsterdam University Press.
- 2011: A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to Accompany the Lord of the Rings. HarperCollins.
Translated
- Ottonian Art by Hans Jantzen.
Illustrated
- 1965: Cover of In De Ban Van De Ring (The Lord of the Rings): Prisma. (Paperback, 3 volumes, in Dutch).
- 1996: Realms of Tolkien: Images of Middle-earth. HarperCollins.
- 1998: Tolkien Calendar 1998. HarperCollins.
- 2011: Official Tolkien Calendar 2011. HarperCollins.
- 2012: Official Tolkien Calendar 2012. HarperCollins.
- 2016: The Iron Parachute. (Canada)
Notes
- Illustrating Tolkienarticle.
References
- ^ a b Knudde, Kjell (11 October 2022). "Cor Blok". Lambiek. Archived from the original on 5 June 2023. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
- ^ a b "Tentoonstelling 'De wereld van Cor Blok'" [Exhibition 'The world of Cor Blok'] (in Dutch). Noord-Hollands archief. 31 May 2022. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
- ^ JSTOR 48614777.
- ^ Collier, Pieter (8 March 2011). "Buy Rare Tolkien Books in the Tolkien Library Rare Book Shop A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to accompany The Lord of the Rings". Tolkien Library. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-00-743798-6.
External links
- Cor Blok record at RKD art database
- Interview with Cor Blok on Tolkien Library