Cor Blok | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Cornelis Blok (1934-02-18)18 February 1934 The Hague, Netherlands |
| Died | 21 May 2021(2021-05-21) (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 aTolkien illustrator; Tolkien purchased one of his paintings.
Cornelis "Cor" Blok was born inThe Hague, Netherlands on 18 February 1934. He studied atRotterdam's Academy of Fine Arts.[1]
From 1956, he worked atHaags Gemeentemuseum, teaching art history and cataloguing the museum'sPiet Mondrian collection. He also taught atLeiden University. He was influenced by modern artists including the Italian metaphysical painterGiorgio de Chirico, the German DadaistMax Ernst, the Swedish multimedia artistÖyvind Fahlström, the British painterDavid Hockney, the Russian painter and criticWassily Kandinsky, the Swiss-GermanPaul Klee, and the AmericanR. 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 fromThe Lord of the Rings in a "quasi-primitive", minimalist style. He wrote and translated several illustrated books ofart history. In later life, he created the surrealistcomic strip albumThe Iron Parachute.[1][2]
A retrospective exhibition of his artistic output was planned for 2020, but this was postponed because of theCovid-19 pandemic. Blok died on 17 April 2021; the exhibition eventually took place in June and July 2022, at Jansstraat 40,Haarlem.[2]
Blok became interested inJ. 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'sThe 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 bookA Tolkien Tapestry.[4][5]
The Tolkien scholar Daniel Howick, reviewing the book forMallorn, wrote that its publication was Tolkienesque, as the 100-odd paintings had to be tracked down individually. Something like the book could have surfaced in 1962, as it had been planned to have a version ofThe Lord of the Rings, fully illustrated byPauline Baynes, with Blok serving in his professional capacity as historian of art; but the book was not printed. OfA Tolkien Tapestry, Howick commented that the paintings ranged from "brilliant" and complex, like "Battle of the Hornburg II", to much simpler works which he found less appealing. He noted, too, that Blok sometimes departed from Tolkien's text, for instance givingGollum a beak, and allowing the comfortable hobbit-hole ofBag End to have an upstairs floor. Howick found some of the paintings "highly successful", like "The Petrified Trolls" and "Frodo's Vision on Amon Hen". He especially admired the "wonderfully atmospheric" painting "Rivendell".[3]