Twenty Pictures from Glorious Days of the Polish American Fraternity - A complete set of postcards designed by Arthur Szyk, with the original paper envelope, and the explanatory booklet in English and Polish, all complete. Published by Drukarnia Narodowa, Krakow, 1939.
Postcards featuring illustrious figures in American history of Polish descent. The explanatory page lists the names of American heroes of Polish origin, starting with John McCollne who preceded Columbus by sixteen years, when he arrived on American shores in 1476, the "Academy" founded in 1659 in New Amsterdam by a Pole, "Alexander Charles Curtius" was the first high school in America, and another Pole, Leopold Bock, founded the first American technical school in New York, and many more.
As is known, Arthur Szyk's origin was in Lodz, Poland, and as early as 1931 he was engaged in art related to the American way of life by creating illustrations of President George Washington and the American Revolution. In 1934 he visited the United States in order to receive a special decoration from the American Congress, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of George Washington. During the 1930s, the Polish and British authorities sent him to the United States to encourage American society to oppose Nazism. And in December 1940 he settled in the town of New Canaan in Connecticut as a final and complete act of the uncompromising identification of the great Polish artist with the American nation, where he lived until his death. This series came out a year earlier and it brings to light the peak of Szyk's deep connection to the American nation in a series that shows how from the beginning, it was the Poles who held the key positions in the development of America, the country he so admired, in which he continued to create until his death.
On the back of each postcard is a description about the painted Polish figure and his part in the history of America.
20 postcards. 15x11 cm. Explanatory booklet. Original envelope. Everything in complete. Very good condition.
