SZYK, 'TWO POLISH OFFICERS', INK AND WATERCOLOUR, 1939

203 by 140mm., pen ink, pencil and watercolour, signed and dated ‘London 1939’, mounted, framed and glazed

EXHIBITED:
‘The Illustrators. The British Art of Illustration 1786-2003’, Chris Beetles Gallery, 2003, no 322

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‘Art is not my aim, it is my means.’ Polish-born artist Arthur Szyk made use of propagandist illustration to raise public awareness of the persecution of European Jews at the hands of Nazi tyranny during the Second World War. He has come to be remembered as far more than an illustrator and illuminator, his political messages and his dedicated devotion to Judaism and to Poland eventually becoming as strong a driving force as his artistic passions.

Arthur Szyk was born in Poland, on 3 June 1894, at a time when it was part of the Russian Empire. He studied in Paris (1910-14), and later at the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow, under Teodor Axentowicz.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Szyk was forced to return to Poland and was conscripted into the Russian Army. Following the independence of Poland in 1918 he served in the Polish army against the Bolsheviks for two years and, as a result, was exposed to the massive pogroms carried out against the Jewish population in Eastern Europe. In 1921 he returned to Paris remaining there for a further decade. During this period, he exhibited in group shows, most notably at the Bibliothèque Nationale, and illustrated many books including The Book of Esther (1925), Flaubert’s La Tentation de saint Antoine (1926) and Pierre Benoit’s Le Puits de Jacob (1927). In 1929, Szyk illuminated and published the Statue of Kalisz, which had granted rights to the Jews in 1264, through the generosity of the Grand Duke of Poland. This work contributed substantially to a revival of interest in the art of illumination, and in turn to the recognition that Szyk was the foremost living exponent of this neglected art.

In 1931, Szyk started to produce decorations for the Société des Nations in Geneva. However, these were never completed because he was sent by the Polish government to the United States to present to the Library of Congress in Washington a series of 38 miniatures on the American Revolution. For this he received the George Washington Bicentennial Medal, awarded by the US Congress, and these works were then exhibited at the Library of Congress exhibition of ‘’Washington and His Times’ and many museums. After this he returned to Poland.

In 1932, Szyk illustrated the Haggadah, a history of Jews in Egypt, which he dedicated to George V, King of England, though it was not published until 1940. By 1937 Szyk was living in London in 1937, and in April of that year there was an ‘Exhibition of Miniatures and Illuminated Manuscripts by Arthur Szyk’ at the Arlington Gallery. His miniatures, devoted to the Poles in America, also formed an important artistic feature of the Polish Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Szyk abandoned work on his illuminated manuscripts, turning his attention instead to anti-fascist cartoons, satires, and caricatures to fight oppression and tyranny, and to encourage the reluctant American public to support the Allied cause. His early wartime work focused on themes such as ‘the brutality of the Germans, the more primitive savagery of the Russians, the heroism of the Poles, and the suffering of the Jews.’ (Tom Cooney of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). It was these themes which were the subjects of his 1940 exhibition, ‘War and ‘‘Kultur’’ in Poland’. Although it has never been confirmed, Szyk always maintained that his mother and brother were murdered by Nazis in the Polish ghetto where they lived, which increased his determination to expose the evil of Nazi tyranny.

In 1940 Szyk emigrated to Canada, and by 1941 had settled in New York. He rapidly became America’s leading political caricaturist because, unlike many other artists working during the Second World War, his political messages were easily understood by the general public. This is due to his strong Jewish identity, and his unswerving commitment to putting an end to persecution of his race. He realised that, combined with his connections, his artistic talents gave him a powerful propagandist position, which he was determined not to waste. Once America had entered the conflict in 1941 he used his art to ease public fear.

An important album of caricatures, The New Order, appeared in 1942. Critical of the Nazis, its contents were reminiscent of the work of the contemporary German satirists, George Grosz and Otto Dix. Americans soon became familiar with Szyk’s illuminated manuscripts and political cartoons as they appeared on and between the covers of popular magazines such as Esquire, Time and Collier’s. Although at this time the subject of his work was varied, ranging from biblical illuminations to advertisements for high profile American companies such as US Steel and Coca Cola, his unique style bridged both.

Stephen Luckert, co-curator of the exhibition ‘The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk’, explains that ‘Szyk dedicated more time and energy than any other artist of his time to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Europe. He understood that Nazi anti-Semitism was fundamentally different and worked to convince the allied powers of this.’ Szyk’s campaign to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine did not cease after the end of the Second World War. For instance, in 1948 he produced the highly-decorated Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel. Although he chose not to live in Israel once it had been made an independent state, and was a non-observant Jew, he had made it his life’s mission to see the Jews triumph over oppression.