BURLINGAME, CA.-The Arthur Szyk Society announced today plans to collaborate with The Deutsches Historisches [German Historical] Museum, Berlin, on a major exhibition of the artwork of Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), the Polish Jewish artist trained in Paris and Krakow, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1940 to escape Europe in the wake of the Holocaust and build American support to join the fight against Nazism and Fascism. The nearly 5,000 square foot exhibition will take place in the I. M. Pei Building with an opening night press conference on Thursday, August 28, 2008, and run through Sunday, January 4, 2009.

“We are particularly pleased that Dr. Hans Ottomeyer, Director of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, proposed to The Society an exhibition that includes an overview of Szyk’s art, with particular focus on his anti-Nazi work of the 1930s and 40s,” said Irvin Ungar, Curator of The Arthur Szyk Society, who will serve as guest curator for the Berlin exhibition. “Our exhibition in Germany will concentrate on Szyk as a ‘citizen-soldier of the free world’ and his emphasis in fighting hatred, tyranny and oppression, and as an advocate for justice.”

The exhibition adds to the growing list of Arthur Szyk exhibitions, including a 2005 three-city tour in Poland and earlier venues at The Library of Congress and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington , D.C.

While Szyk is best known in the U.S. and Europe for his searing caricatures of Hitler, Goering, Mussolini and Hirohito, he also applied his unique style of medieval illuminations to a broad range of Americana including The Declaration of Independence and The Four Freedoms, as well as biblical books such as Esther, Job and Ruth, and his famous Haggadah.

“The German Historical Museum ’s exhibition will be another major milestone for the art of Arthur Szyk,” said Sander I. Stadtler, President of The Arthur Szyk Society. “For those people who are not familiar with Szyk’s entire body of work and his immense skills, this exhibition will be a revelation. We are thrilled to be working with Dr. Ottomeyer and Dr. Monika Flacke, head of the Museum’s 20th century art collection, on this seminal art-world event.”

About Arthur Szyk - Arthur Szyk (pronounced Shick) was a child art prodigy who received his formal art education in Paris and Krakow as a teenager. His first art exhibitions were held in Paris at the Galeries A. Decour in the early 1920s and London in the 1930s. He was regarded in Europe as a master of the medieval technique of manuscript illumination, but became equally famous for his powerful political caricatures during World War II. Szyk immigrated to America from his native Poland via London in 1940 to emphasize the need for US involvement in the fight against Nazism. From the moment of his arrival his work appeared everywhere: magazine covers, newspapers, books, posters, corporate advertising, and in art galleries and museums. Numerous one-man shows were held in New York in the 1940s including exhibitions at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co, Andre Seligmann, Inc., and Messrs. Wildenstein & Co., and at The Philadelphia Art Alliance. In the 1930s and 40s Szyk’s art was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and San Francisco’s Palace of the Legion of Honor, as well as at the Library of Congress. Szyk, who admired the United States since his childhood, became a US citizen in 1948. His life was devoted to creating visual art that often exposed the cruelty of injustice and dramatized the struggle for freedom and human dignity.

About The Arthur Szyk Society - The Arthur Szyk Society, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1991, presents the artist's prolific body of works to broad and diverse audiences in the U.S. and worldwide, thus ensuring that Szyk's legacy as a great artist and champion of democratic and Jewish values will never be forgotten. Irvin Ungar serves as Curator. The Arthur Szyk Society is located at 1200 Edgehill Drive , Burlingame , California 94010 ; telephone: 650.343.9588. www.szyk.org