Joseph P. Ansell
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774945
- eISBN:
- 9781789623314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774945.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter examines Arthur Szyk's career as a political caricaturist during World War II. In less than four months, since the September 1939 German invasion of Poland, Szyk had created a ...
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This chapter examines Arthur Szyk's career as a political caricaturist during World War II. In less than four months, since the September 1939 German invasion of Poland, Szyk had created a significant number of images directed against the Nazi aggressors. The range of subjects treated in these works is broad. There are the expected caricatures of Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders, ridiculing them and indicting their ideas and actions. Others depict Nazi ‘types’, anonymous members of the Schutzstaffel (SS) or the war staff; they are shown as brutal and unthinking, with an air of superiority that is patently false and hollow. These images express the trenchant political invective associated with caricature. Yet there is another group of works which, although in the same style as the caricatures, might best be described as political drawings. This significant portion of Szyk's images concentrates on Polish citizens and their struggle to survive.Less
This chapter examines Arthur Szyk's career as a political caricaturist during World War II. In less than four months, since the September 1939 German invasion of Poland, Szyk had created a significant number of images directed against the Nazi aggressors. The range of subjects treated in these works is broad. There are the expected caricatures of Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders, ridiculing them and indicting their ideas and actions. Others depict Nazi ‘types’, anonymous members of the Schutzstaffel (SS) or the war staff; they are shown as brutal and unthinking, with an air of superiority that is patently false and hollow. These images express the trenchant political invective associated with caricature. Yet there is another group of works which, although in the same style as the caricatures, might best be described as political drawings. This significant portion of Szyk's images concentrates on Polish citizens and their struggle to survive.
