Arthur Szyk (pronounced Shick) (1894-1951) is considered by scholars and art critics to have been the greatest 20th century illuminator working in the style of the 16th century miniaturist painters. Americans first knew and loved Arthur Szyk's illuminated manuscripts and political caricatures as they appeared on and between the covers of their most popular magazines during the Second World War: Time, Esquire, Collier's and advertisements for U.S. Steel and Coca Cola. His subjects were as diverse as his uniquely combined styles of renaissance illumination and political caricature: The Declaration of Independence, Nazism, The Passover Haggadah and Book of Esther, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the United Nations, American Cancer Society, and even coffee, steel and airlines.

Szyk's art was not an end in itself. It was his means to promote tolerance, human dignity and freedom. In his time, he became widely known for the declaration: "Art is not my aim, it is my means." Szyk first visited the United States from his native Poland in 1934 to receive the George Washington Bicentennial Medal, awarded by the U.S. Congress, and to attend the Library of Congress exhibition opening of Washington and His Times. He emigrated to the U.S. after fleeing Nazism in 1940, and became America's leading political caricaturist during World War II. Ironically, it is because of the Holocaust that Americans can proudly claim this world renown artist and social commentator as our own.

The Times of London declared his art work to "be among the most beautiful...ever produced by the hand of man."