REVIVING THE ARTIST WHO FOUGHT HITLER

A soldier in art.

Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) was a Polish-born artist who made his name lavishly illustrating Jewish books while also producing powerful anti-Nazi art for the Allied cause. Szyk’s work synthesized the traditions of manuscript illumination, modernist abstraction, and political caricature to realize an unmistakably unique vision. Since his death, his work has largely fallen from attention. Ungar’s mission—the author is an antiquarian bookseller and former pulpit rabbi—is to restore Szyk’s reputation, to circulate his artwork for the general public, and to make the case for his place in the canons of great figural painting. Ungar writes, “Believing as I do in the importance of Szyk’s messages and the genius of his art, I know he deserves to belong among the well-known and popularly recognized artists and among the pantheon of great artists.” The author chronicles his first encounters with Szyk’s work, his inquiries into the circulation of his public art, and his building of the artist’s reputation through lecturing, publishing, and curation. Lavishly illustrated with full-color reproductions of the work—ranging from a Passover Haggadah through portraits of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, political cartoons, and allegories of American freedom—the book shows us the man who sought to be a “soldier in art” in the fight against fascism. A self-portrait by Szyk shows the artist “sitting at his desk, pinning Hitler to the table with his pen while the Führer is trying to pull away.” A brilliant draughtsman with an eye for face and form, Szyk emerges like a Jewish Norman Rockwell. This is a book of passion whose real theme is the place of art in social and political resistance and, moreover, the place of the artist in the author’s own story of finding his purpose in a life of Jewish learning.

A passionate journey of one man’s love of Jewish art as the steward of Arthur Szyk’s legacy.