page_title: Arthur Szyk
section_title: Reaction to the outbreak of the war
hierarchical_section_title: Arthur Szyk / World War II / Reaction to the outbreak of the war
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of Szyk's Book, "The New Order", which contains selections of cartoons and caricatures originally published in the New York newspaper, PM. The book was published in July 1941, five months before the United States entered War War II, and many of the cartoons reflect Szyk's optimism that it would end soon. The title page for this book bears the caricatures of Hermann Goering (center), Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (left), and Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan (right) that appeared in the pages of PM on Sunday, January 19, 1941.
context_page_description: Arthur Szyk was a Polish-Jewish artist who worked primarily as a book illustrator and political artist throughout his career. Arthur Szyk was born into a prosperous middle-class Jewish family in Łódź, in the part of Poland which was under Russian rule in the 19th century. An acculturated Polish Jew, Szyk always proudly regarded himself both as a Pole and a Jew. From 1921, he lived and created his works mainly in France and Poland, and in 1937 he moved to the United Kingdom. In 1940, he settled permanently in the United States, where he was granted American citizenship in 1948.
  Arthur Szyk became a renowned artist and book illustrator as early as the interwar period. His works were exhibited and published not only in Poland, but also in France, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States. However, he gained broad popularity in the United States primarily through his political caricatures, in which, after the outbreak of World War II, he savaged the policies and personalities of the leaders of the Axis powers. After the war, he also devoted himself to political issues, especially the support of the creation of the state of Israel.
context_section_description: The German invasion of Poland found Szyk in Britain where he supervised the publication of the Haggadah and continued to exhibit his works. The artist immediately reacted to the outbreak of World War II by producing war-themed works.  One feature which distinguished Szyk from other caricaturists who were active during World War II was that he concentrated on the presentation of the enemy in his works and seldom depicted the leaders or soldiers of the Allies. This was a characteristic feature of Szyk's work till the end of the war. In January 1940, the exhibition of his 72 caricatures entitled War and "Kultur" in Poland opened at the Fine Art Society in London, and was well received by the critics. As the reviewer of The Times wrote:
  There are three leading motives in the exhibition: the brutality of the Germans – and the more primitive savagery of the Russians, the heroism of the Poles, and the suffering of the Jews. The cumulative effect of the exhibition is immensely powerful because nothing in it appears to be a hasty judgment, but part of the unrelenting pursuit of an evil so firmly grasped that it can be dwelt upon with artistic satisfaction.
  Szyk drew more and more caricatures directed at the Axis powers and their leaders, and his popularity steadily grew. In 1940, the American publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons offered to publish a collection of his drawings. Szyk agreed, and the result was the 1941 book The New Order, available months before the United States joined the war. Thomas Craven declared on the dust jacket of The New Order that Szyk:
  …makes not only cartoons but beautifully composed pictures which suggest, in their curiously decorative quality, the inspired illuminations of the early religious manuscripts. His designs are as compact as a bomb, extraordinarily lucid in statement, firm and incisive in line, and deadly in their characterizations. (…) These are remarkable documents.
  Some years later, in 1946, art critic Carl Van Doren said of Szyk:
  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 Hitler and Hirohito and Mussolini. Here is the damning essence of what has happened; here is the piercing summary of what men have thought and felt.
caption: The New Order (dust jacket). New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1941
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "1893", "Image ImageLength": "2220", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "Cover of Szyk's Book, \"The New Order\", which contains selections of cartoons and caricatures originally published in the New York newspaper, PM. The book was published in July 1941, five months before the United States entered War War II, and many of the cartoons reflect Szyk's optimism that it would end soon. The title page for this book bears the caricatures of Hermann Goering (center), Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (left), and Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan (right) that appeared in the pages of PM on Sunday, January 19, 1941.", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2014:12:01 14:57:51", "Image WhitePoint": "[0, 0]", "Image PrimaryChromaticities": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "Image YCbCrCoefficients": "[0, 0, 0]", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "0", "Image ReferenceBlackWhite": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "Image ExifOffset": "984", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1502", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "11413", "EXIF ExposureTime": "0", "EXIF FNumber": "0", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "[0, 0]", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "0", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "0", "EXIF ApertureValue": "0", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "0", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "0", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Unidentified", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "0", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1893", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2220", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "0", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "0", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "0", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "0", "EXIF SensingMethod": "0", "EXIF FileSource": "0", "EXIF SceneType": "0"}