![[Szyk Picture]](Szyk.JPG)
Szyk, Arthur (Artur)
(1894 - 1951)
artist, patriot
Artist, illuminator and internationally famous miniaturist. Born in Lodz. Poland. Studied art in Paris, France. Traveled extensively throughout Europe and continuing his art studies. Since his native Poland was invaded by the Nazis in September 1939. Szyk has dedicated his art exclusively to blasting the Axis powers. Previously he had obtained international recognition as a miniaturist, and his works are hung in many important galleries throughout the world. His series of miniatures on George Washington are now (1943) at the Roosevelt Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y. A series of caricatures blasting the Axis powers was published in 1941 in a book form entitled "New Order." It is generally agreed that Szyk's bitter impressions of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito represent a powerful force in awakening people in America to the issues at stake in the war. His anti-Axis satires in color and black and white have been shown to millions of soldiers throughout the U.S.O. recreation centers, and at West Point and Mitchell Field, and also at the Museum of the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md. Residence: 323 West 73rd St., New York, N.Y.
From: "Who's Who in Polish America" by Rev. Francis Bolek, Editor-in-Chief; Harbinger House, New York, 1943
Szyk, Artur
Born June 3, 1894 in Lodz; died September 9, 1951 in New Canaan, CT; painter, graphic artist, satirist; son of Solomon, an industrialist and Eugenia nee Rogocka. After finishing the Merchants' Alliance High-School (1910) in Lodz, he left for Paris to study art at the Academie Julian. He returned in 1917 to Lodz and became the art director for the weekly magazine "Smiech" [Laughter]. In 1914 he was an independent [non-credit] student at the Fine Arts Academy in Krakow. That year he and his artist friends left on an excursion to Palestine and Stanbul, where he was staying when WWI broke out. After crossing into Russian territory he was inducted into the Russian Army at Odessa, and he stayed with the army as it fought in the vicinity of Lodz. After deserting he hid out in Aleksandrow. After the war ended he continued his artistic pursuits drawing, among other things, illustrations for Julian Tuwim's "Rewolucja w Niemczech" [Revolution in Germany] and for several periodicals. When the Polish-Bolshevik War (1919 1921) broke out he volunteered for the Polish Army and fought on the front, later became director of the propaganda department as an officer. From 1923 he was associated with the daily "Republika" for which he drew over 100 political caricatures and satirical drawings. It was then he developed his style, that borrowed from the illuminated manuscripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, applying a great number of details and daring coloration, which he first used for illustrating the "Song of Songs" as translated by Zygmunt Bromberg-Bykowski.
From the autumn of 1924 he made his permanent residence in Paris where during 1926-28 he created his most important pre-WWII work "The Statute of Kalisz" published in 1932 with a run of 500 copies at the F. Buckmann printing house in Munich for the Round Table Publishers in Paris. On 45 loose pages he illustrated the history of Jews in Poland, often stressing their positive input into Polish history. Copy number one (presently at the National Library in Warsaw) he personally presented to Jozef Pilsudski who was very much impressed by this work. "The Statute of Kalisz" were exhibited at galleries in Europe and New York, it brought Artur Szyk world wide recognition and opened the way to further career accomplishments. His next work was the "Haggadah" which illustrated the history of the Jewish People, published in London in 1940, where he relocated in 1937. Earlier he created a cycle of 38 works called the "American Revolution" which was purchased in 1935 by president Ignacy Moscicki [of Poland] for 15 thousand zlotys and presented to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (they were displayed at the White House until 1941). After the outbreak of WWII he relocated to Canada, then to the United States, where he remained for the rest of his life, and applied his enormous energies to an anti-fascist campaign, publishing hundreds of satirical drawings in the most influential newspapers (New York Times, Chicago Sun) and magazines Colliers, Time, Esquire) to enlighten American Public opinion (Eleanor Roosevelt called him a "one-man army fighting Hitler"). These drawings were later published in two volumes "The New Order" (1941) and "Ink and Blood" (1946). At the same time he actively worked with American Polonia.
Before the outbreak of WWII he prepared for an exhibition in New York (in 1939) a cycle of 20 painting showing the history of Poles in the United States [Pictures from the Glorious Days of the Polish-American Fraternity](printed in 1939). For the Polonia publishing house he illustrated the "American Almanac and Collection of Facts" (1943). After the war he continued his artistic work and also drew illustrations for advertising campaigns. He was decorated with the French Officers Palms (1923); Polish Gold Cross of Merit (1930); and the American Washington Order (1934). He died suddenly from a heart attack and was buried at the Montefiori Cemetery on Long Island, NY. He left behind a wife, Julia nee Likierman (1898-1974), son Jerzy [George] (1917-57), and married daughter Aleksandra Braciejowski (Bracie) who owns the rights for reproducing the graphic heritage left by her father. In Burlingame, CA, is the headquarters of the Arthur Szyk Society, (founded in 1991) that promotes his art.
Sources: B. Jegier-Filipiak, Artur Szyk (1894-1951), "Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego w Polsce" [Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland], 3 (1989); M. Szukalak, Lodzkie rysunki Artutra Szyka [The Lodz Drawings of Arthur Szyk] 1997; I. Ungar, Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk, Berkeley, 1999; S. Lukery, The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk, Washington, 2002.
Author: Rafal T. Prinke
Translated from: "Encyklopedia Polskiej Emigracji i Polonii," Edited by:
Kazimierz Dopierala, Vol. V, Oficyna Wydawnicza Kucharski, Torun, Poland,
2003;
by: Peter J. Obst (2007)
Arthur Szyk (1894 - 1951)
Critics praised him as "the greatest illuminator since the 16th century." They claimed he "had no equal in the field of contemporary miniature painting and design" and was the true successor of his medieval precursors "in integrating calligraphy, illuminations, illustration and narrative into one harmonious whole." It was no accident that his two finest works The Haggadah and The Statute of Kalisz -- sprang from the twin sources of his origin: Jewish and Polish.
Arthur Szyk was born in Lodz son of a textile mill owner. He showed early promise, and though his father had first sent him to a business school, he soon relented and allowed the 15-year old boy to study at the Julian Academy in Paris. Fascinated by the work of medieval monks, Szyk made up his mind at 17 to devote his talent to the lost art of manuscript illumination. He returned to Poland and continued his studies in Krakow under Axentowicz, then traveled to the Middle East to study Oriental art, particularly the fabulous Moslem miniaturists. During World War I he served briefly in the Tzarist army, got married, and later fought with distinction as an officer in the Polish Army during the Polish-Russian War of 1920.
In 1921 the Szyks went to that Mecca of the artists of their time -- Paris -- where he promptly attained acclaim and fame. Even higher honors awaited Szyk in London, where he settled in 1937. It was in London, in 1941, that The Haggadah (called by the London Times "the most beautiful book ever produced by human hands") was published. The Haggadah is the book of ritual for the Jewish holiday of Passover, the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Szyk devoted four years of his life to this work, and it took the printer another three years to produce it. When it finally appeared, it was probably not only the most beautiful, but also the most costly new book in the world. Only 200 copies were printed and they sold at $500 each. Szyk lived long enough to see his work attain top collectors' price -- $3,000 per copy.
Szyk's finest work is generally thought to be The Statute of Kalisz, a charter of privileges granted to the Polish Jewry by Boleslaw the Pious (1264) and confirmed by Casimir the Great (1334) and Casimir the Jagiellonian (1447). Printed on specially made paper, 500 copies of the work were produced, but most of these were destroyed in the Holocaust of World War II and fewer than 50 are in existence today. The work consists of 56 pages of elaborate Gothic lettering (no type is used) and several full-page miniatures.
Although he applied his artist's insight to some themes close to our time -- a series on Simon Bolivar, another on George Washington, [purchased by Poland's President Moscicki as a gift for President Roosevelt, it now hangs in the Roosevelt Museum in Hyde Park] and still another (created for the Polish Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1939) on Poles in America -- it is the biblical and medieval themes that have always held the strongest attraction for Szyk. He illustrated limited editions of The Song of Songs, Temptation of St. Anthony, Jacob's Well, The Song of Roland, Canterbury Tales, and others.
But the time of blood came, the time to turn away from the fanciful and the medieval. Within the first few weeks of World War II, Szyk's entire family in Poland was wiped out. His son joined De Gaulle's Free French. The artist (in New York since 1941) felt the need to join the crusade against chat civil that had blighted the lives of millions, as well as his own.
From the gentle art of illumination, Szyk turned to savagely effective anti-Nazi cartoons. "Seldom before has brutal invective been leashed to such consummate craftsmanship and jeweled color," wrote the Art Digest, Within six months after the German invasion of Poland, Szyk mounted an exhibit in London called "War and 'Kultur' in Poland," and a collection of his cartoons, The New Order, was published in the U.S. in 1941. Another and larger collection, Ink and Blood, was published in 1946, and many covers and cartoons appeared in leading U.S. magazines.
"I do not say that art is my aim," Szyk was quoted as saying. "Art is my means."
Far from locking himself in an ivory tower, Szyk was one of the vice chairmen of the American League for a Free Palestine, and one of the directors of the International League for the Rights of man.
Artur Szyk died at 57 in his home in Connecticut. He did not live long enough to see the publication of his last work, The Arabian Nights.
From: "Artur Szyk" by Marta Erdman in "The Quarterly Review" Jan-March 1973
Arthur Szyk - Soldier in Art Rare Polish Poster from World War II Discovered
by ZBIGNIEW KANTOROSINSKI with JOSEPH P. ANSELL
While conducting research at the Library on his forthcoming biography of Polish-born artist-illustrator Arthur Szyk (1894- 1951), Professor Joseph P. Ansell of Otterbein College made a remarkable discovery. Among the Library's extensive poster collections is an extremely rare example designed by Szyk in 1943 to support Polish War Relief, a member agency of the U.S. National War Fund.
Professor Ansell believes there may be fewer than a half- dozen copies of Szyk's "Poland Fights Nazi Dragon - Polish War Relief" in existence. The poster is a beautiful example of a work by an artist who devoted his entire career to fighting for freedom and religious tolerance.
Produced at the darkest moment of the war, Szyk's poster portrays St. George as a soldier, the personification of Poland, fighting the Nazi dragon that was consuming Europe. The motif of St. George and the dragon was one Szyk turned to many times throughout his career when depicting the concept of good triumphing over evil. The poster is typical of Szyk's political drawings and is an example of his work on behalf of war-related causes.
The aim of the poster was not only to promote war relief efforts but to boost recruitment from within the Polish-American community, whose approximately 3 million members represented the third largest ethnic group in America.
Szyk was born in Lodz, Poland. As a young man, he studied for four years at the Julian Academy in Paris and later at the Krakow Academy of Arts under Teodor Axentowicz. Szyk did not work in the prevailing modernist tradition; his miniature paintings and illustrations were influenced by medieval and Persian manuscript illumination. Szyk's jewellike colors and striking combinations of patterns were praised by critics and collectors. By the 1920s, he was well known throughout Europe and the United States. His work entered many important collections, including those of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the White House.
From the Sept. 1, 1939, German invasion of his native country until the end of World War II, Szyk devoted his energy to fighting the Axis powers through his art. He moved to the United States in 1940 and immediately offered his artistic services to his new homeland. He was an avid and consistent supporter of fund-raising efforts during the war. Szyk donated his drawings to most relief organizations and created illustrations for the U.S. Treasury Department bond drives. He illustrated magazine covers for Time and Collier's and was a political cartoonist for several newspapers. Many of these works were also exhibited in museums and art galleries throughout the United States. More than 1 million soldiers saw his anti-Fascist caricatures at military training centers and exhibitions of his works held at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.
Szyk regarded himself as "Franklin D. Roosevelt's soldier in art" and eventually became a naturalized American citizen in 1946. Eleanor Roosevelt declared that his work fought the Axis powers "as truly as any of us who cannot actually be on the fighting fronts." Many considered him the foremost political artist in the country. One survey conducted by Esquire magazine in 1941 reported that Szyk's political cartoons were "more popular with young Americans in training under the Selective Service Act than photos of movie actresses or 'pin-up girls.'
The "Poland Fights Nazi Dragon" poster is not Szyk's only connection with the Library of Congress. Other works by Szyk are in the collections of the Rare Book and Special Collections, Prints and Photographs and the Humanities and Social Sciences divisions as well as the Hebraic Section. Some of these other works include: a 52-sheet portfolio of illuminations for a Haggadah (London, 1940); the frontispiece for Marc Mallet's La ronde des deesses (The Dance of the Goddesses) (Paris, 1925); and his illustrations for Zygmunt Bromberg-Bytkowski's Piesn nad piesniami (Song of Songs) (Lodz, 1924). In 1934 the Library exhibited his series of miniature paintings, "George Washington and His Times," which he later presented to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a gift from the Polish people.
Zbigniew Kantorosinski is an acquisitions librarian in the Order Division; Joseph Ansell is professor and chairperson of the Visual Arts Department at Otterbein College.