“I am a Pole and a Jew and I want, according to the will of God, to work for both nations.”Artur Szyk was born on 16 July 1894 in Łódź into the family of a factory owner. The 1932 catalogue reads: “He completed his secondary schools in Łódź, marking his Polishness with his deeds during the period of the school strikes.” It was also here that he began his artistic education, later continued in 1908 at Académie Julian in Paris. In 1910, he returned to Poland to attend classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow with Professor Teodor Axentowicz as a free student.The outbreak of World War I found him in the Middle East, where he was on an artistic journey with a group of painters from Łódź. His fascination with Eastern miniatures would be explored in his later work as an illustrator. In Constantinople, he was accused of espionage by the Turkish authorities. On his return home via Odessa, Szyk was conscripted into the Russian army. He managed to escape and return to Łódź. Here, in 1916, he married Julia Liekerman. They had two children, Jerzy and Aleksandra.Szyk was working extensively as a caricaturist at this time. His drawings appeared in such magazines as: “Śmiech”, “Harap”, “Kurier Świąteczny”, “Mucha”, “Republika” or “Ekspres wieczorny”. When the war with the Bolsheviks broke out in 1920, he took part as a volunteer. He serves as a lieutenant in General Bułak-Bałachowicz's unit. He used his talent to create mobilisation posters for the Volunteer Army. The ethos of the Polish soldier will be very close to his heart. It will repeatedly appear as a motif in the drawings created by the artist. In 1941, while in America, he portrayed himself in a Polish uniform.After leaving the army, he moved with his family to Paris in 1921 to work on illuminations studied at the Louvre and the Bibliothèque Nationale. By the end of 1926, Szyk was working on a 45-page life work, the “Statute of Kalisz”, describing the privileges granted to Jews by Bolesław the Pious. This series brought the Szyk family back to Poland, with numerous exhibitions in various cities at home and abroad. Another famous historical series of drawings by the artist was “Washington and His Times”, which Szyk started while still in Paris in 1929. Szyk met Hitler's rise to power in 1933 with concern. He began work on a Haggadah and dedicated it to Poland:“To Poland, my homeland, the eternal seat of my ancestors, I offer this book of the liberation of my people as a tribute of love, and in honour of the dignified Jews of Lviv who initiated my work, I give this book the title of the Lviv Haggadah. Artur Szyk, the Polish illuminator.” In 1937 he moved with his family to London. The outbreak of World War II finds him there – Szyk tries to support the Poles' fight against the invaders. He publishes drawings showing the fate of the victims of the war – Poles and Jews. Every soldier Szyk draws is a hero, decorated with a Virtuti Militari medal.He draws and publishes anti-war works throughout the war in London and in America, where he and his family had lived since 1940. They have great propaganda power – they move and show the suffering of the victims of Nazism and Bolshevism. Exhibitions of his drawings generate excitement among the visiting crowds. Eleonore Roosevelt called the artist “a one-man army”. Following the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, he salutes the perishing nation and its fighters in several harrowing works.In 1948, he accepts American citizenship. At the same time, he supports the creation of the state of Israel, an idea he had already held dear in the 1930s. His busy and rich life came to an end in 1951. He left behind hundreds of illustrations, posters and drawings. He was a virtuoso of line, colour and emotion. A citizen of the world and an ardent patriot – of Poland, Israel and America.   Agnieszka Bebłowska Bednarkiewicz, curator of the exhibitionDuration: 16/11/2023 – 10/12/2023Curator: Agnieszka Bebłowska BednarkiewiczGraphic design: Anna BurchardVernissage: November 16, 2023 6 p.mCuratorial tour: 17/11, 24/11, 1/12, 8/12 at 16.00-19.00Exhibition organizers: Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, National Center for Culture