Arthur Szyk

Life & Legacy

Arthur Szyk (Polish: Artur Szyk [ˈar.tur ʂɨk], see Polish phonology; June 3, 1894 – September 13, 1951) was a Polish-born American Jewish artist who did book illustration and political art throughout his career. Arthur Szyk was born into a prosperous middle-class Jewish family in Łódź, in the part of Poland under Russian rule in the 19th century. An acculturated Polish Jew, Szyk always proudly regarded himself both as a Pole and a Jew. From 1921, he lived and created his works mainly in France and Poland; in 1937 he moved to the United Kingdom. In 1940, he settled permanently in the United States, and was granted American citizenship in 1948.
Arthur Szyk became a renowned artist and book illustrator as early as the interwar period. His works were exhibited and published in Poland and France, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States. However, he gained broad popularity in the United States primarily through his political caricatures, in which, after the outbreak of World War II, he savaged the policies and personalities of the leaders of the Axis powers. After the war, he also devoted himself to Zionist political issues, especially the support of the creation of the state of Israel.
Szyk's work is characterized in its material content by social and political commitment, and in its formal aspect by its rejection of modernism and embrace of the traditions of medieval and renaissance painting, especially illuminated manuscripts from those periods.