page_title: Arthur Szyk
section_title: Moving to the United States and war caricatures
hierarchical_section_title: Arthur Szyk / World War II / Moving to the United States and war caricatures
caption_attribution_description: English: Polish-Jewish artist Arthur Szyk's image of Adolf Hitler, with skulls reflected in his eyes and the words "Vae Victis" (Latin for "woe to the vanquished (ones)") in his black hair. The detailed watercolor and gouache painting is filled with figures and war imagery: uniformed Nazi soldiers, men in manacles, a field of skulls, and a skeleton with a banner with a line from a National Socialist song: "heute gehört uns Deutschland / morgen die ganze Welt" [today Germany is ours, tomorrow the whole world] .
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: At the beginning of July 1940, with the support of the British government and the Polish government-in-exile, Arthur Szyk left Britain for North America, on assignment to popularize in the New World the struggle of the British and Polish nations against Nazism. His first destination on the continent was Canada, where he was welcomed enthusiastically by the media: they wrote about his engagement in the fight with Nazi Germany, and the Halifax-based Morning Herald even reported about the alleged bounty Hitler had put on Szyk. In December 1940, Szyk and his wife and daughter went to New York City, where he lived till 1945. His son, George, had enlisted in the Free French Forces commanded by General Charles de Gaulle.
  Soon after his arrival in the U.S., Szyk was inspired by Roosevelt's 1941 "Four Freedoms" State of the Union speech to illustrate the Four Freedoms, preceding Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms by two years; these were used as poster stamps during the war, and appeared on the Four Freedoms Award which was presented to Harry Truman, George Marshall and Herbert H. Lehman. Szyk became an immensely popular artist in his new home country the war, especially after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the war. His caricatures of the leaders of the Axis powers (Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito) and other drawings appeared practically everywhere: in newspapers, magazines (including Time (cover caricature of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in December 1941), Esquire, and Collier's), on posters, postcards and stamps, in secular, religious and military publications, on public and military buildings. He also produced advertisements for Coca-Cola and U.S. Steel, and exhibited in the galleries of M. Knodler & Co., Andre Seligmann, Inc., Messrs. Wildenstein & Co., the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Brooklyn Museum, the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and the White House. More than 25 exhibitions were staged altogether in the United States during the war years. At the end of the war, in 1945, his drawing Two Down and One to Go was used in a propaganda film calling American soldiers to the final assault on Japan. According to the Esquire magazine, the posters with Szyk's drawings enjoyed even bigger popularity with American soldiers than pin-up girls put on the walls of American military bases. In total, more than one million American soldiers saw Szyk's in reproduction at some 500 locations administered by the United Services Organization.
  In recognition for his services in the fight against Nazism, Fascism, and the Japanese aggression, Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady and wife of President F. D. Roosevelt, wrote about Szyk several times in her newspaper column, My Day. On January 8, 1943, she wrote:
  ...I had a few minutes to stop in to see an exhibition of war satires and miniatures by Arthur Szyk at the Seligman Galleries on East 57th Street. This exhibition is sponsored by the Writers' War Board. I know of no other miniaturist doing quite this kind of work. In its way it fights the war against Hitlerism as truly as any of us who cannot actually be on the fighting fronts today.
caption: Arthur Szyk, 1942, Anti-Christ, watercolor and gouache on paper. Szyk's portrayal of Adolf Hitler as the embodiment of evil: his eyes reflect human skulls, his black hair the Latin words "Vae Victis" [woe to the vanquished (ones)].
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