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.
Arthur Szyk loved three countries: Poland, the land of his birth; Israel, the land of his people; and America, the land of his ideals. Upon his immigration to the U.S. in 1940, he announced: "At last, I have found the home I have always searched for. Here I can speak of what my soul feels. There is no other place on earth that gives one the freedom, liberty, and justice that America does." Despite his recognition by the press and military establishment as a citizen-soldier of the free world, Szyk was named as a subversive by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1949. His response: he illuminated the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and Four Freedoms Prayer. In this lecture, you will see a multi-sided America through the eyes of Arthur Szyk.