The Book of Job. The complete suite of eight original gouache and ink illustrations. Each signed by artist, many dated, and all bearing penciled captions of Biblical verses below.

AUCTION 67 | Wednesday, December 16th, 2015 at 1:00
One Hundred and Fifty Years of Jewish Art

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Lot 26
SZYK, ARTHUR.

The Book of Job. The complete suite of eight original gouache and ink illustrations. Each signed by artist, many dated, and all bearing penciled captions of Biblical verses below.

Each framed. 7 x 5.25 inches / 17.75 x 13.25 cm (each individual image).

New York, 1943-45:

Est: $100,000 - $150,000
PRICE REALIZED $110,000
<<Provenance:>> Acquired by the parents of the present owners, directly from the artist, who was a close family friend. <<(Lot 26 continued).>> Polish-born Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) worked primarily as a book illustrator and political artist throughout his decades-long career. Here Szyk brings together these two orientations in this series of paintings executed for the Limited Edition Club, that were published in 1946. Szyk’s images combine the Biblical tale with the events and suffering engendered by World War II. His caricatures mock the leaders of the Axis Powers, indeed in two of Szyk’s images, (see above) the evil Sabean and Chaldean marauders appear in the guise of the Germans and Japanese, portrayed here with grotesquely caricatured ethnic facial features. ”Szyk portrayed the two tribes who attack Job’s family as barbarian Germans and Japanese, thereby linking the historical trials and tribulations of the Jewish people to their recent persecutions and to the War in general.” See I. Ungar, Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk (1998) p. 85. See also J.P. Ansell, Arthur Szyk: Artist, Jew, Pole (2004) pp. 167-70. << With these extremely detailed, brightly patterned miniature paintings, each rendered in Szyk’s classic jewel-like colors, the artist brilliantly reframes the Biblical poem denoting God’s Justice and human suffering as an allegory of World War II and the extermination of the Jews.>>