I found a copy of Anderson’s Fairy Tales at a used bookstore in Dallas. I was really impressed with the illustrations and looked up the illustrator, Arthur Szyk, as soon as I got home. I instantly became a big fan of his work. I really love his caricatures, use of pattern and attention to details.
From Wikipedia:
Arthur Szyk (pronounced “Shick”) (Åódź, 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.”
