Arthur Szyk

02/14/2020

Exhibition of Political Art by WW2-era Human Rights Advocate Arthur Szyk opens at The Magnes, UC Berkeley!

Arthur Szyk, Madness (1941), 2017.15.1.70 Date: Tuesday, January 21, 2020Exhibition of Political Art by WWII-Era Human Rights Advocate Arthur SzykOpens at UC Berkeley Magnes Collection Students help to bring artist’s historic calls to action to contemporary audiences Berkeley, Calif. (January 21,...

05/11/2016

We are excited to announce the opening of the Traveling Exhibit, Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk at Congregation Or Zarua, in New York City on May 15, 2016. The opening will be from 6pm-8pm at 127 E. 82nd Street. Irvin Ungar, curator of The Arthur Szyk Society, will give an illustrated t...

04/26/2016

Passover week is happening now! And naturally we recommend Arthur Szyk's gorgeous Passover Haggadah above all others.

The 2011 edition from Abrams Books is affordable enough that everyone in the family can have their own copy at the Seder table. http://www.abramsbooks.com/product/szyk-haggadah_9780810997455/

02/15/2016

We are pleased to announce a special lecture by expert Irvin Ungar as part of the ongoing Arthur Szyk exhibit at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee.

02/01/2016

Beautiful inside cover illustration of Arthur Szyk's Andersen's Fairy Tales, the world's most reprinted edition of Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales. New York, 1944.

01/30/2016

While Norman Rockwell was illustrating idyllic rural magazine covers for The Saturday Evening Post, Arthur Szyk was illustrating in-your-face topical magazine covers for Collier's Magazine. What do you think of this image? It's called "He Who Rules By The Sword."

01/24/2016

Here is Arthur Szyk's triumphant portrait of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, painted in 1944 and given (after FDR's death) to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1946. Note the artist signs the work "Arthur Szyk, F.D.R.'s Soldier in Art."

Read more about Szyk's powerful World War II artwork in The Nation's recent article "Visualizing the Four Freedoms: FDR's Fighting Artist, Arthur Szyk." http://www.thenation.com/article/visualizing-the-four-freedoms-fdrs-fighting-artist-arthur-szyk/

01/18/2016

Whether you speak Polish, English or Hebrew, you can enjoy watching the short film "Soldier in Art: Arthur Szyk", an illustrated musical tribute to Polish-Jewish artist-activist Arthur Szyk (1894-1951).

Directed by Jim Ruxin, with an original score by Richard Friedman, “Soldier in Art: Arthur Szyk” (© Illuminated Productions, 2014) is a four-part suite interpreting Szyk’s visual commentary on American democracy, the horrors of Na**sm and the Holocaust, and the rebirth of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. Together, the images and music express the essence of Szyk’s activism for freedom, dignity, and the human soul.

01/16/2016

"But here was a Jewish artist ardent for Poland and in my surprise . . . I said: ‘My dear Mr. Szyk, you sound just like a Polish propagandist.’ He looked at me as if to say: ‘Well, what’s wrong about being a Polish propagandist if you believe in Poland?’ and then he interpreted that look in words: ‘Surely I am a Polish propagandist. Because Poland is our last refuge in Europe.’"
- Harry Salpeter, ‘The Human Touch—A Loyal Polish Jew’, Jewish Daily Bulletin, 18 February 1934, 6.

For more information, read the short essay "Szyk and Poland" and view the illustrated timeline "Early Life in Poland" on the website of The Arthur Szyk Society:

http://www.szyk.org/szyk-and-poland/
http://www.szyk.org/early-life-new/

01/15/2016

We are pleased to announce two up-coming lectures by Arthur Szyk expert, Irvin Ungar on 21 January in Tempe and Scottsdale, Arizona.

01/13/2016

Discover an amazing story of World War II: America's secret weapon, Arthur Szyk, the passionate "soldier in art" (and Polish-Jewish refugee) who blasted fascism with his paintbrush and pen.

“In its way [Arthur Szyk’s work] fights the war against Hi**erism as truly as any of us who cannot actually be on the fighting fronts today.” —First lady Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day column, January 8, 1943 Seventy-five years ago this January, President Franklin Roosevelt stood before Congr...

01/13/2016

“Arthur Szyk was the virtuoso caricaturist of World War II. He eviscerated his prey, yet his images were curiously beautiful, like paintings by Bosch or drawings by Dürer. He rendered Hi**er, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Mussolini and Hirohito as buffoons, inflating their features into indictments of evil, yet his images are so precisely detailed that it is difficult not to be seduced by their majesty.”
— Steve Heller, art director of the New York Times, 2002

“There is no one more certain to be alive two hundred years from now. Just as we turn back to Hogarth and Goya for the living images of their age, so our descendants will turn back to Arthur Szyk for the most graphic history of Hi**er and Hirohito and Mussolini.”
— Carl Van Doren, art critic, 1946