Item:
ONJR22SS072

Original WWII Anti-Axis Political Cartoon Illustration Book By Polish Artist Arthur Szyk - Copyright 1941, Manufactured in the U.S.

Item Description

Original Item: Only One Available. Polish-born Arthur Szyk was "one of the most original of political cartoonists… his designs are as compact as a bomb, extraordinarily lucid in statement, firm and incisive of line, and deadly in their characterizations… He concentrates his powers on people— on Adolf and his gang, fixing the guilt where it belongs and creating an immortal record of inhuman conduct and organized savagery" (Thomas Craven).

Szyk's The New Order won high praise on publication for its collection of 39 "savagely effective anti-NSDAP cartoons… The German torture and murder of millions of Jews before and during WWII, in which his mother was one of those slain, led Szyk to use his talents as a cartoonist as an anti-NSDAP weapon. While his son, George, fought as a member of the Free French forces, Szyk struck hard and often against the NSDAP with his art" (New York Times).

Szyk, who arrived in the United States in late 1940, was “one of the first artists to show America the face of the war… [His] images were so powerful that Adolf placed a price on the artists's head". Throughout his career, Szyk viewed his Jewish heritage as integral to his work: "I am but a Jew praying in art."

The front cover illustration shows Hermann Göring seated on a throne, his left foot resting on a skull, looking over his right shoulder is Benito Mussolini and to his left is Hideki Tōjō; a death's head with swas over the words "New Order" appears at the top center of the page.

The book is in a heavily used state with the binding glue separating from the actual book. There is some minor tearing around the edges of the dust cover but there is no damage to any of the pages containing the artwork.

This is truly a wonderful example loaded with astonishing, brilliant, humorous, and, at the same time, deadly serious artwork. Comes ready to display!

Book Introduction From 1941
“THE CARTOONS which make up this astonishing, brilliant, humorous, and, at the same time, deadly serious book are the work of the outstanding Polish artist of our day. The cartoons are a completely original form of art, combining the satiric quality of the familiar political drawing with the color and depth usually reserved for less ephemeral subjects.

In The New Order Mr. Szyk's vitriolic brush depicts with stirring realism the Dictators of Europe and Asia with their hirelings and victims. Words are not equal to the task of describing exactly what Mr. Szyk has accomplished. Field Marshal Goering, for instance, is here in the spirit as well as in the flesh. You can hear the click of the shining teeth of the Japanese militarist. The brutality and barbarism of the whole new order become a physical sensation as one turns each page.

Mr. Szyk is famous in the United States today, as well as in Europe, as an illustrator and illuminator of extraordinary power. He is the recipient of numerous honors in the field of art, and the originals of many of his finest paintings were exhibited in New York City during the spring of 1941. It is interesting to note that Mr. Szyk received the George Washington Medal for the work in his history of the American Revolution, Washington and His Times, and that the original paintings for this book were purchased from the artist by President Moscicki of Poland and presented to President Roosevelt, and that the collection now hangs in the White House.”

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