ARTHUR SZYK

BILDER GEGEN NATIONALSOZIALISMUS UND TERROR

IMAGES AGAINST NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND TERROR

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Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin

August 29 to January 4, 2009

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Arthur Szyk’s work is known for its witty political illustrations, caricatures and cartoons during the first half of the 20th Century. His work was influenced by the medieval miniaturists and the illuminated manuscripts. His most well known publication, the Szyk Haggadah, one of the most beautiful illustrated books of the 20th Century, is a compelling example of Szyk’s theme to portray contemporary political issues in the neo-medieval style which would distinguish his work from his contemporaries.

Wagner, 1942

Illustration by Arthur Szykat the Deutsche Historische Museum in Berlin

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Arthur Szyk was born in Poland in 1894 to Jewish parents who soon discovered his talents of ’sketching,’ for which he was once expelled from school because of his anti-Czarist drawings. Szyk studied art at the Academie Julian in Paris, France in 1909, later in Krakow in 1913 and lastly in Palestine in 1914. He was drafted by the Russian Army to serve in World War I but later fought as a guerilla during the Polish-Bolshevik War against the Russians in 1921, where he assisted in saving Jews from Soviet attacks.

One of his first published illustration Rewolucja w Niemczech (Revolution in Germany), a satire of post-WW I Germany in 1919 gained him considerable attention, which sparked an extraordinary career in countries like France, Morocco, England and eventually in the U.S. Szyk left Europe and settled in Canaan, Connecticut in 1940.

In 1941, he published The New Order, one of the first books assembling an array of anti-fascist caricatures in America. Eleanor Roosevelt named him the “one-man-army.” His work was exhibited at Messers. Wildenstein & Co, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Brooklyn Museum, the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and the White House among others in the 1940s.

Anti-Christ, 1942

Illustration by Arthur Szyk at the Deutsche Historische Museum in Berlin

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In 1951, Arthur Szyk, then a US citizen, was investigated by the House on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in public and private hearings which focused on ‘real and suspect communists in positions of actual or supposed influence in American society.’ Szyk would not survive to see a resolve of his investigation and died of a heart attack in the same year.

Books

The Szyk Haggadah

Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk A Study Guide by Byron L. Sherwin. Burlingame, CA: The Arthur Szyk Society, 2002