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Arthur Szyk in Connecticut: A New Look at a 20th Century Master
An image from “Family at the Seder,” from the 1935 Haggadah by artist Arthur Szyk (b. 1894, Lodz, Poland—d. 1951, New Canaan, CT). Photo: Courtesy of Irvin Ungar
The work of Polish-Jewish painter Arthur Szyk, a miniaturist who savaged Nazis and championed values of human dignity through his lavishly detailed works, is having its largest exhibition in over half a century at the Fairfield University Art Museum in Connecticut.
The exhibit is organized around the theme of human rights and features dozens of works by the famed artist.
Szyk’s political cartoons placed Nazi genocide, tyranny, and antisemitism on the covers of America’s most popular magazines during World War II. Today, his morally-minded graphic storytelling, deeply conversant in the themes and examples of graphic storytelling, have renewed relevance, according to Irvin Ungar, the exhibition’s curator emeritus of the Arthur Szyk Society.
“Arthur Szyk continues to speak to us as a human being and as a Jew,” Ungar said. “His paintings reflect his belief in the fundamental dignity of every human being.”
Ungar, a former pulpit rabbi and antiquarian bookseller who has devoted 25 years to scholarship on the Jewish artist Arthur Szyk, has become one the foremost experts on Szyk’s life and work.
The exhibition is divided into six sections — including Human Rights and their Collapse, and The Rights of Nationhood — which reflect the diversity of Szyk’s artistic and ethical commitments.
As a self-described “soldier in art,” Szyk’s work was acclaimed by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as a potent weapon “against Hitlerism.”
Born in 1894 Lodz, in what is now Poland, Szyk grew up in an upper-middle class Jewish family of textile manufacturers, thought to be descended from a great Talmudic scholar. As a young boy, Szyk witnessed an uprising by Polish peasants — after which his father, blinded by acid thrown in his face at a factory skirmish, would never be able to see his son’s colorful artworks.
Hailing from a diverse city that was one-third Jewish, Szyk was raised with both a universalist sense of common humanity and a particularist devotion to the Jewish community. In 1940, he immigrated to America, where he went on to become the leading anti-Nazi artist of the day, ultimately casting himself as a “spokesperson for the Jewish people,” according to Ungar.
The exhibition is coordinated by Philip Eliasoph, a professor of art history and visual culture at Fairfield University, and is co-sponsored by the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, the Center for Jewish History, NY, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Fairfield County. It runs from Sept. 29 to Dec. 16. More information can be found here.
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Treasure Trove: How a Polish-Jewish artist told Canadians about the horrors of Nazi Germany and produced beautiful illustrations
Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) was a Polish-Jewish artist whose work reflected the historic times he lived: the two world wars, the rise of totalitarianism in Europe and the birth of the State of Israel. In 1940, with the support of the British government and the Polish government-in-exile, he visited Canada to popularize the struggle against Nazism. […]
The post Treasure Trove: How a Polish-Jewish artist told Canadians about the horrors of Nazi Germany and produced beautiful illustrations appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Biden hits Fundraising Trail in Show of Strength after Dismal Debate Performance
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., June 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo
President Joe Biden embarks on a series of fundraising events across two states on Saturday as he works to stamp out a crisis of confidence in his re-election campaign following a feeble debate performance that dismayed his fellow Democrats.
Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit the upscale New York beach enclave known as the Hamptons for a campaign fundraiser hosted by hedge-fund billionaire Barry Rosentein. Later in the day, he will travel to New Jersey for a fundraiser hosted by wealthy New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat.
Fellow hedge-fund founder Eric Mindich and his Tony Award-winning producer wife Stacey, celebrity couple Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and actor Michael J. Fox are all listed as members of the host committee at the New York event, according to an invitation seen by Reuters.
Biden told a rally in North Carolina on Friday he intended to defeat Republican rival Donald Trump in the November presidential election, giving no sign he would heed calls from Democrats who want him to drop out of the race.
Biden‘s verbal stumbles and occasionally meandering responses during Thursday night’s debate heightened voter concerns that the 81-year-old might not be fit to serve another four-year term.
The Biden campaign on Saturday boasted it had raised more than $27 million between debate day through Friday evening, but questions remain about whether the debate performance will hurt fundraising, at least in the short term.
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Arab League Rescinds the Classification of Hezbollah as a Terrorist Group
Mourners carry a coffin during the funeral of Wissam Tawil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces who according to Lebanese security sources was killed during an Israeli strike on south Lebanon, in Khirbet Selm, Lebanon, Jan. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
i24 News – The Arab League no longer defines Hezbollah as a proscribed terrorist group, an official said on Saturday.
Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shiite militia and a proxy of the Islamic regime in Iran, boasts the world’s largest rocket arsenal of any non-state actor. It is animated by the antisemitic ideology of jihad and is committed to the destruction of Israel.
“In earlier Arab League decisions, Hezbollah was designated as a terrorist organization, and this designation was reflected in the resolutions,” Hossam Zaki, the assistant secretary-general of the Arab League, was quoted in Arab media as saying.
“The League’s member states concurred that the labeling of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization should no longer be employed,” Zaki said, adding that the regional body “does not maintain terrorist lists and does not actively seek to designate entities in such a manner.”
Hezbollah has unleashed numerous rockets, mortars and drones on northern Israel in the past eight months starting on October 8, a day after the Jewish state suffered the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust at the hands of the Palestinian jihadists of Hamas.
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