Arthur Szyk (pronounced "Shick") (Lódz, Poland, 1894 - New Canaan, Connecticut, September 13, 1951) was a Polish-born American artist, famous for his anti-Axis political illustrations, caricatures, and cartoons during World War II, as well as his illustrations for magazine and newspaper articles and books; including an illustrated Haggadah of Pesach, the Szyk Hagaddah, cited by The Times as "worthy to be placed among the most beautiful of books that the hand of man has ever produced". His illustrations took the form of medieval miniaturists and illuminated manuscripts, which gave them a very distinctive style. Szyk dedicated his work to democracy and freedom, and end to political injustice and human suffering, saying of his work, "Art is not my aim, it is my means", and "I am but a Jew praying in art."

Szyk was born in Lódz, Poland, to Jewish parents. At one time, he was expelled from school for his anti-Czarist, pro-Zionist, and pro-Polish sketches. Considered a child prodigy, he studied art in the Academie Julian in Paris, France in 1909, in Kraków in 1913, then in Palestine in 1914. During World War I the served in the front lines of Russian Army for six months in 1914, then in 1919-1920 during the Polish-Soviet war, he served as artistic director of the Department of Propaganda for the Polish army in Lódz. He fought as a guerilla during the Polish-Bolshevik War in 1921 under the name "Lieutenant Alex Szinkarenko", to save Jews from attack.

In 1919, Szyk's illustrated Rewolucja w Niemczech (Revolution in Germany) was published, a satire of post-World War I Germany. In 1921, he moved to Paris, where he illustrated such bo