?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 40,000 - $ 60,000
(SZYK, ARTHUR.) Statutes of Kalisz. 47 leaves comprising 45 full-color plates plus nomination and limitation page; 385 x 320 mm; 15 1/4 x 12 3/4 inches, on light brown antique paper created especially for this edition. Plates loose as issued in 1/2 burgundy morocco and cloth portfolio, with gilt lettering and floral device along spine and Orzel Bialy Polish coat of arms on front cover, extremities rubbed with some surface loss of leather joints starting, internal protective flaps separated or starting; plates generally clean and bright but for occasional soft creasing near corners with hard creases on nomination page, f.9 with light 1/2-inch soil mark in far left margin. Printed by F. Bruckmann in Munich on January 25th, 1932. Paris: Éditions de la Table Ronde, 1932
one of 500 copies of the extremely rare limited edition facsimile of the statutes of kalisz, the Charter of Rights granted to the Jews of Poland by Boleslav the Pious in 1264, re-confirmed by Kazimierz III in 1334, and by Kazimierz IV the Great in 1447 and again in 1467.
In 1926, following Marshal Jozef Pilsudski's coup d'etat in Poland, Szyk wanted to create a work that might help welcome the Jews into full and equal participation in the newly re-established state, so he turned to this medieval document for inspiration. While it specifically addresses the legal status and economic contributions of the Jews in Poland and their heroism in the struggle for freedom, he translated the original Latin into Polish, English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, German, and Spanish as an example of modern religious tolerance of all European nations in an increasingly intolerant age. This facsimile was published five years after the creation of the original illuminated manuscript which resides in the collection of the Jewish Museum in New York City. See Ansell, Joseph P. Arthur Szyk: Artist, Jew, Pole (Portland, 2004); Ungar, Irvin. Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk. (Chicago, 1998).
While the unnumbered limitation page shows that this copy is out-of-series and is missing the blank leaf as called for in collation, the colophon is signed by szyk and states "This portfolio of forty-seven sheets is complete. Arthur Szyk, New Canaan, April 4 - 1950."
