A new appreciation of political artist Arthur Szyk

By Phil Hall / phall@westfairinc.com

“In Real Times. Arthur Szyk: Artist and Soldier for Human Rights” will be presented Sept. 29 through Dec. 16 at Fairfield University Art Museum’s Bellarmine Hall Galleries. An adjunct exhibition titled “Szyk: The Interactive Experience” will run simultaneously in the Museum’s Walsh Gallery.

Szyk was born in 1894 in Łódź and was educated in Paris at Académie Julian and in Krakow at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts. He gained European prominence in the 1920s as a book illustrator and as an artist who celebrated Polish history, and in the 1930s he was praised by American art critics for the “Washington and

His Times” series that he presented to the Library of Congress. He lived in Paris and London before relocating to the U.S. in 1940, where he created political illustrations in support of the Allied war effort. His work was widely seen domestically on the covers of popular magazines and by U.S. troops in posters distributed by the United Services Organization (USO). During this time, he also created book illustrations and commercial art for major companies, including U.S. Steel and Coca-Cola.

Szyk settled in New Canaan in 1945 and during the postwar years he created work celebrating the birth of the State of Israel and the havoc created within the U.S. by McCarthyism and Jim Crow politics. He died of a heart attack at his home in 1951.

Today, Szyk is celebrated for his visually vibrant depictions of Jewish culture and for detailing the Nazi tyranny and genocide – he is credited as being among the first public figures to aggressively call attention to the Holocaust as it was being perpetrated.

“This important exhibition will allow the museum to do so something it does very well, and that is to be a place where difficult conversations can take place,” said Carey Weber, executive director of the Fairfield University Art Museum, in a press statement announcing the exhibition. “Szyk’s work will prompt frank discussion about antisemitism and the memory of the Holocaust at a time when antisemitism is once again on the rise in our country.”

The new exhibition is curated by Dr. Francesco Spagnolo, curator of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley. The exhibition opened at the Magnes in May 2021 and was later on view at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans before coming to the Fairfield University Art Museum, which will be the exclusive exhibition venue in the Northeast.

At the Fairfield University Art Museum, the exhibition is coordinated by Dr. Philip Eliasoph, professor of art history and visual culture and special assistant to the president for arts and culture and is co-sponsored by the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, the Center for Jewish History in New York and the Jewish Federation of Greater Fairfield County. Connecticut Humanities has provided a $30,000 grant for the exhibition.