Below you will find the latest news from the front lines of the Szyk renaissance. Check back regularly to stay informed of major announcements.

I am pleased to announce that I have been asked by the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York City, to deliver four zoom lectures about Arthur Szyk this winter/spring. The talks begin Monday evening February 26, 2024 (7pm ET) and will follow every two weeks until the final presentation on April 8.

Commemorating Arthur Szyk’s 130th Birthday – This four-part lecture series 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. Each class is from 7 PM to 8:30 PM ET and will have live closed caption.

Class Schedule

Behind the Great Art and the Great Messages Stands Arthur Szyk, the Great Man
February 26
Register here

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 of bridges between peoples and among nations.

 

The Fabric of America Through the Art of Arthur Szyk
March 11
Register here

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.”

 

Injustice Illuminated: The Holocaust Art of Arthur Szyk
March 25
Register here

Szyk became the most important anti-Nazi artist in America during World War II and the leading artist for the rescue of European Jewry. No one created more activist art to motivate America’s fight against the Nazis than the “soldier in art” himself, and his Holocaust art was more widely reproduced than that of any artist.

 

Arthur Szyk and the Art of the Haggadah
April 8
Register here

Arthur Szyk’s Haggadah was not only the most expensive new book in the world upon publication in 1940, but the Times of London deemed it “worthy of being considered among the most beautiful of books ever produced by the hand of man. This study will also demonstrate how Szyk saw Hitler as the new Pharaoh and the Nazis as the new Egyptians who had come to annihilate his people, using an ancient text to deliver a modern message about persecution and freedom.

Irvin Ungar
January 23, 2024

The exhibition, In Real Times. Arthur Szyk: Artist and Soldier for Human Rights, runs September 29—December 16, 2023. It will feature approximately 50 original paintings and drawings, making it the largest Szyk exhibition in the New York/Connecticut area in almost fifty years.

Click here for a link to the full Szyk program/schedule at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut. The exhibition was organized by the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to the exhibition open during gallery hours and the free accompanying programs, I will be giving a private gallery tour on October 4 at 4 p.m. Please click on this special link to rsvp for this tour. This will be followed at 5 p.m. by the symposium keynote lecture by Steven Luckert, PhD, senior program curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and author of The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk. Both the 4 p.m. gallery tour and 5 p.m. keynote lecture require registration.

The day-long symposium is on October 5, 2023, registration for both the morning and afternoon sessions is necessary. Click here to register for all of the public programs.

Fairfield is only 12 miles from Arthur Szyk’s New Canaan home!

Irvin Ungar
September 28, 2023

Inside the book:

Announcing the first ref­er­ence book of its kind, Arthur Szyk Preserved is an essen­tial com­pendi­um of all orig­i­nal Szyk works on paper known to reside in insti­tu­tions. This defin­i­tive vol­ume empow­ers a new gen­er­a­tion of schol­ars and art lovers to accu­rate­ly locate 670 draw­ings and paint­ings across thir­ty-one inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions and to sur­vey Szyk’s career with ease.

Click here for a full description.

Irvin Ungar
May 8, 2023

The Fitz Ascher Society through its founder Rachel Stern, together with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum scholar Steven Luckert, PhD, have advanced the awareness of Arthur Szyk to wider audiences. Click links below to learn more about Szyk’s art through new perspectives and insights in lectures, discussions and an online exhibition.

Irvin Ungar
March 2, 2022

[Lecture] Steven Luckert. Cartoon Crusader: Arthur Szyk’s War against Nazism. April 7, 2021.
[Presentations/Discussion] Irvin Ungar and Steven Luckert, “The Cartoon Crusader Comes to America: Arthur Szyk’s Battle against Nazis in the New World.” November 10, 2021.
[Online exhibition] “Identity, Art and Migration: Artists and Composers who Fled Persecution.” Szyk exhibition curated by Steven Luckert. February 27, 2022.
[Movie] Cartoon Crusader. Universal Pictures. 1946. Live footage of Arthur Szyk at work. Length: 2 minutes.

A landmark offering of 500 new images by one of America’s most celebrated political artists during World War II. Artstor, a leader in presenting a digital library of art for educational use and scholarly research, published a blog about the Szyk Collection and unveiled 500 high resolution and fully catalogued images. Students, faculty, and staff members who are affiliated with institutions—universities, libraries, museums, secondary schools, select government agencies and foundations—will be the direct beneficiaries.

Irvin Ungar
April 28, 2021

Donald Kuspit, leading American art critic and historian, is regarded as the foremost practitioner of psychoanalytic art criticism. Kuspit opens his article with this striking proclamation:

“When thinking of the most prominent American artists of the 1940s, the names Edward Hopper, Ben Shahn, and Jackson Pollock come to mind, but not Arthur Szyk, who was perhaps the most significant of them…”

Click here to read the article.

Irvin Ungar
February 2, 2018

J. Hoberman, former staff writer and senior film critic for the Village Voice reviewed the New-York Historical Society’s “Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art” exhibition and accompanying book for Tablet magazine. Hoberman’s article highlights Szyk as a “singular figure in 20th-century art,” distinct from “his modernist bona fides.” Rich with historical information about Szyk and enthusiastic descriptions of Szyk’s formal choices as an artist, this article is not to be missed. View it here.

Irvin Ungar
October 16, 2017

“Friends of Arthur Szyk: Celebrating a Soldier in Art.” Created and directed by Jim Ruxin, Illuminated Productions, 2017. 8:11.

Tributes are paid to Arthur Szyk by those most familiar with his work: scholars, curators, authors, and historians. Brief interviews are shown with Steven Heller, graphic design author; Dr. Johannes Zechner, historian; Katja Widmann, art historian; Art Spiegelman, graphic artist and author; Daniel Rose, entrepreneur and essayist; Dr. Byron Sherwin, rabbinic scholar and professor; Dr. John Pawlikowski, ethicist and author; and Tom L. Freudenheim, art historian and museum director.

Produced on the occasion of the opening of the “Arthur Szyk: Solder in Art” exhibition at New-York Historical Society, open now through January 21, 2018.

Irvin Ungar
September 27, 2017

Arthur Szyk returns to New York City for the first time in over 40 years! This exhibition opened to the public on September 15, 2017 and will run through January 21, 2018. For more information, visit New-York Historical Society’s website. Information on my next guided tour is available here.

I am also thrilled to announce the publication of Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art, a gorgeous, full-color catalogue of more than 200 of Arthur Szyk’s works of art, with essays by Michael Berenbaum, Tom L. Freudenheim, James Kettlewell, and myself. The book is available in the gift shop at New-York Historical Society and is on sale at szyk.com in both softcover and hardcover.

Irvin Ungar
September 27, 2017

Alexandra was born on March 19, 1922 in Lodz, Poland, the second child of Arthur Szyk and Julia Likierman. Her brother George, who fought for the Free French during WW II died in the late 1950s in New York. Alexandra died on August 18, 2016—94 years old—and 94 years young. On Sunday, I officiated at her funeral in New York at the New Montefiore cemetery in Pinelawn Memorial Park, Long Island where she was buried at the foot of her father in the family plot of the Forest Hills Jewish Center section. Alexandra Szyk Bracie was my friend for over 25 years, we loved Arthur Szyk together and we loved each other. Our journey has been an endless conversation of mutual admiration and respect and joy. She was a lady of boundless spirit, filled with youthfulness to the end which exuded from her wide smile, her uplifting voice, her intellectual curiosity, and her contagious enthusiasm. “Irv, tell me dear,” (about your family, about recent events with Arthur Szyk in the world, about the next exhibit, about how I am doing), and with each response came another smile, a laugh, and more questions. This was our routine during each of my visits to her Highland Beach, Florida condominium and then in the last few years at her New York apartment. She moved to Manhattan to be closer to her daughters, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren… and she was so happy about that. She was predeceased by her husband, Joseph Braciejowski (she was married to Joe in November, 1941, one month before Pearl Harbor…she was 19 years old…Rabbi Stephen S. Wise officiated!).

Here was a lady of keen intellect, of class and charm, of dignity and grace. One would never see Alexandra (some called her Alice or Alicia—her Hebrew name was Miriam) without her lipstick and her hair properly done, and always dressed just right for the occasion…. I will never forget the evening when she wore the most elegant cobalt blue dress for the opening of the Szyk exhibition in Berlin in August 2008…. She was stunning at age 87—greeted by museum directors and curators, diplomats and the press as an international celebrity (her picture appeared on the front page of a leading German newspaper across from Madonna!)… In Berlin she sat at the right side of the Director of the Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM) while he hosted a Queen’s dinner in her honor… Yes, much of course had to do with the fact she was Arthur Szyk’s daughter, but she became the center of attention on her own… in Lodz and Krakow in 2005 I witnessed her speaking in her native Polish—greeting journalists, filmmakers, and community leaders, while charming the US Ambassador to Poland at a July 4th reception gala in his Warsaw home…in Washington, DC she was honored by The Arthur Szyk Society and The Taube Foundation at a Four Seasons reception in conjunction with the 2002 opening of the exhibition “Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk” at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)…at the time, it was Hadassah Lieberman, our honored guest speaker, who was honored to meet Alexandra. And to hear her speak her impeccable French during our travels together was to picture her as a young girl growing up in Paris with her Polish nursemaid Monika in her family home, on the estate of her father’s patron and gallery owner Auguste Decour.

Alexandra loved life, embraced all of it… she referred to the great artist lovingly and formally as “Father”… from his diary accounts he loved her dearly… postponing all activities when she was ill as a child… and cherishing her until his death in 1951. Alexandra preserved his legacy, giving public talks, lending artwork for exhibitions, donating artwork to the permanent collections of the USHMM and the Library of Congress, the DHM and the Society of Illustrators, documents to YIVO and the New York Public Library… all while creating a legacy of her own.

Alexandra taught me some wonderful life lessons, and her life intertwined so preciously with mine—she, more than anyone, has been my partner in Arthur Szyk’s resurrection during my lifetime… but more than anything else… she taught me a spirit of optimism, of looking ahead, illuminating the past while embracing the future… I shall continue the journey with deep thanks and appreciation for a truly irreplaceable friend…

Irvin Ungar
August 24, 2016

He was my friend, he was a mentor, and he was a collaborator in my work with Arthur Szyk. Byron died on May 22. Words cannot express how dearly I miss him. We talked regularly. Rabbi Sherwin was a profound scholar who made the most complex Hebrew texts and Jewish ideas accessible to the layman. He was clear, precise, and insightful. He was a thinking man’s thinker. He was a theologian, he was an ethicist, and he was an educator. He was the Distinguished Service Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies at Chicago’s Spertus Institute where he was on the faculty since 1970.

Many will recognize Rabbi Sherwin as the translator and commentator of The Szyk Haggadah that I published as a luxury limited edition in 2008, and which was reissued with an additional variant commentary by Byron in the publication created for Abrams Books popular edition in 2011. I first met him in the mid-1970s when, as a young Jewish educator participating in CAJE conferences, I attended his lectures. Years later, after I left the rabbinate (Forest Hills, NY 1974-80; Burlingame, CA 1980-87) I would seek out Byron’s High Holy Day sermons for spiritual insight and take them to the synagogue to read for myself during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. I would re-read many of them year after year (they always seemed so timely), and quite often passed them down the row to anyone sitting near me, anticipating the pleasure and inspiration others would receive from his words and instruction as well.

It was Byron whom I approached in 1996, almost a decade after I entered the rare book world as a dealer, and advocate for Arthur Szyk, and asked if he would host at the Spertus Museum an exhibition of Szyk’s artwork. In August 1998, “Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk” opened in Chicago for which I was the guest curator. A catalogue accompanied the exhibition; it was the first illustrated book about Arthur Szyk ever published. Byron wrote the Introduction to the book that I created. None of this would have ever happened without his invitation and encouragement.

Byron first met Arthur Szyk as a young boy in 1952 (Szyk died in 1951) when as he described it “my family had migrated from The Bronx to Queens. It was Rosh Hashanah. With my parents, I entered the main sanctuary of The Forest Hills Jewish Center, and there, towering above me, was the imposing Holy Ark, two stories tall….who created such imposing magnificence? Years later, I learned his name—Arthur Szyk.”

Bryon has written more than two dozen books and more than 150 articles and monographs. He was a protégé of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. In 2011, I visited the gravesite monument of the Hasidic luminary, the Seer of Lublin, in Poland—near it I put a note, calling upon this mystic of Jewish tradition to heal my friend who had been stricken with cancer a few months before. On the train ride from Warsaw to Lublin I carried with me Bryon’s book: Sparks Amidst the Ashes, The Spiritual Legacy of Polish Jewry (1997), heightening the meaning of the journey I was taking. Anyone who wishes to understand the history and richness of Jewish life in Poland over the centuries preceding the Holocaust in Eastern Europe should seek out this book.

Some titles of Byron’s other books are: How to be a Jew (1992), Why Be Good? (1998), Jewish Ethics for the Twenty-First Century (2000), Golems Among Us: How a Jewish Legend Can Help Us Navigate the Biotech Century (2004), Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (2006), The Cubs and the Kabbalist: How a Kabbalah-Master Helped the Chicago Cubs Win Their First World Series since 1908 (2006), and Faith Finding Meaning: A Theology of Judaism (2009).

In 2002, The Arthur Szyk Society launched its traveling exhibition program, which has traversed the United States many times with venues at universities, museums, and community, cultural, and Holocaust centers. In 2005 it opened in Poland—in Krakow and Warsaw. Again, I called upon Byron—this time to write a Study Guide to accompany the exhibition “Justice Illuminated.” It is an indispensable educational guide to decoding and understanding Szyk’s artwork—it focuses on three themes: WWII and Holocaust, America, and Jewish Response.

In 2006 I set out to publish the new edition of The Szyk Haggadah which required a new translation and commentary, as historian and Oxford scholar Cecil Roth’s language and explanations for the 1940 edition proved to be too Victorian and antiquated, and often disconnected from Szyk’s artwork. I needed to find the one individual who was steeped in scholarship, and who could capture and interpret Szyk’s visual commentary for the modern age. There was only one such individual who was an expert in Bible, Talmud, Jewish History, Polish Jewry, Mysticism, who was a Master Educator, and who knew Arthur Szyk: Rabbi Byron Sherwin. His translation and commentary on the Passover Haggadah are unparalleled.

I am eternally grateful to Byron Sherwin for all his kindnesses, his guidance, his friendship, and for unlocking the door to let Arthur Szyk once again enter our world. It was he who provided the key that granted me the privilege and opportunity to journey with Szyk in his revival.

In my personal library are numerous copies of Byron’s books, he inscribed many of them: “To Irv, Szyk’s friend and mine.”

It is Byron who allowed me to fulfill that special relationship echoed by the Talmudic tradition: “Find yourself a teacher and you found yourself a friend.”

Irvin Ungar
June 3, 2015

21st-century efforts return Szyk’s political art to public consciousness

NEW YORK—Steve Heller, design expert and author, recently interviewed Irvin Ungar and on May 29, 2014 published a widely-shared essay on the political and social significance of Arthur Szyk’s art.

Referencing Szyk works such as “Anti-Christ” (right), the portrait of Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto which appeared on the cover of Time magazine (December 1941), and “Modern Moses” (1944), Heller discusses the messages of justice and freedom Szyk represented, and Irvin Ungar’s tireless campaign to raise Szyk awareness through presentations, exhibitions, and film.