Eggs Unhatched on the Sun by Henry Orlik presents an otherworldly landscape of subtle contradictions. The fleshy panorama is quiet yet humming with energy and a sense of time and life unfolding. It is littered with soft indents cradling egg-like forms. Some are empty, suggesting a newly founded or preexisting absence. The soft colour palette enhances the dream-like nature of the work and implies an awareness of biological processes taking place. Bodily life cycles of creation and burial are called to mind, whilst an indefinable solar presence hovers above, perhaps simultaneously nurturing and destructive to the delicate processes below. At over 1.5 metres long and with a powerful sense of receding space, the viewer is absorbed within a seemingly infinite landscape where creation and destruction coexist.
Drawing from his personal experiences, Orlik’s artworks explore the depth and complexities of the human condition through themes of conflict, vulnerability, refuge, loss, freedom, survival, intimacy and regeneration. Treading a line between conscious and unconscious states, unexpected juxtapositions and distortions of the familiar encourage a slower pace of looking and uncovering meaning.
Despite his extraordinary vision, very few people had heard the name Henry Orlik a little over a year ago. Between August 2024 – June 2025, Winsor Birch organised three seminal exhibitions of Orlik’s work in London, Marlborough and New York. He was launched back into the public sphere after 50 years and hailed in the press as a “surrealist master” and “surrealist art star”. Yet, this isn’t the first time that Orlik has gained national critical attention. In the 1970s, he was a rising star in the surrealist art scene. His work was praised for its technical brilliance and cynical humour, and shown alongside surrealist masters such as Salvador Dali and René Magritte. Challenges with the commercial art world saw him retreating from public life, and Orlik spent the next half a century developing his practice behind closed doors.
At the revival of Orlik’s public profile, people are discovering a significant body of work that uses a unique visual language to explore human nature and experience. It makes sense that such a strong representation of British surrealism would be at home in the modern art collection at Museum & Art Swindon. Yet the rationale isn’t just about the growth of a national or international reputation. It’s about local significance too.
Orlik and his family arrived in England as Polish refugees in 1948, and moved between several Resettlement Camps before coming to Swindon in 1959. They were part of the Polish Diaspora who make up a large portion of Swindon’s population today. Orlik studied art at Swindon College between 1963-66. He is one of many successful alumni of Swindon College (formerly the Swindon School of Art), including Leslie Cole, Harold Dearden and Ken White, who are also represented in the art collection at Museum & Art Swindon.
Eggs Unhatched on the Sun was acquired with the help of grants from the Contemporary Art Society and the Friends of Museum & Art Swindon, and with the aid of the artist’s representatives at Winsor Birch. It is now on display in our Origins Galleries, and its unveiling coincides with an exhibition The Lost Surrealist: Henry Orlik’s Quantum Revolution, which celebrates Orlik’s life and career through over 30 loans from private collections.
By Katie Ackrill, Collections and Exhibitions Officer, Museum & Art Swindon
The Lost Surrealist: Henry Orlik’s Quantum Revolution is on display until 14 March 2026. It is accompanied by Surreal Impulses, an exhibition of artworks with surrealist connections from the art collection at Museum & Art Swindon.
