Behind the Great Art and the Great Message Stands Arthur Szyk, the Great Man

Polish-born Jewish artist Arthur Szyk (Łódź, 1894—New Canaan, CT 1951) was a great advocate for humanity and for the global Jewish community. Szyk (pronounced Shik) achieved world-wide recognition in the 1920s and 1930s in Poland, France, and England before immigrating to the U.S. in 1940 where he went on to become the leading anti-Nazi artist during World War II. Szyk is also famous for his illuminated Passover Haggadah, and his iconic towering Holy Ark for the Forest Hills Jewish Center. Szyk’s work fought injustice and intolerance, bigotry and racism as a “soldier in art.”

This four-part lecture series by Szyk scholar Irvin Ungar will explore how and why Szyk is the artist of and for the Jewish people, and the ways his art and spirit remain eternal in the service of mankind. 

The first lecture in the series will firmly establish Szyk as one of the most popular Jewish artists of his era. He was decorated by the governments of Poland, France, and the United States with medals for both his art and his building bridges between peoples and among nations. Newspaper and magazine headlines called him: "The Great Artists Arthur Szyk;" "Arthur Szyk, Champion of his People;" "the World-renowned and Genius Arthur Szyk." Behind all of it stood Arthur Szyk, the Great Man.