During World War II, one of the most unusual weapons aimed at the Axis powers came not from a battlefield but from a drawing board. Boris Artzybasheff, a Ukrainian-born artist working in the United States, produced a series of bold, surreal illustrations targeting Nazi Germany and its allies. These works were commissioned by the Wickwire Spencer Steel Company, an American firm that operated from 1901 to 1963. The images were unlike anything else being produced at the time — deeply strange, visually aggressive, and impossible to ignore.
Artzybasheff’s anti-Axis series showed humans twisted and contorted into the shape of swastikas. Bodies bent, limbs folded, and figures merged into the most recognized symbol of Nazi hatred. This approach directly echoed the work of German artist John Heartfield (born June 19, 1891; died April 26, 1968), who had used photomontage as a political weapon against the Nazi regime. Where Heartfield cut and pasted photographs, Artzybasheff drew and painted — but both artists used the swastika itself as a tool of mockery and condemnation.
Artzybasheff was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, the son of Mikhail Artsybashev, a well-known Russian writer. Their relationship was not warm. Just days before the First World War broke out, his father delivered a blunt three-part message: leave Russia, stop relying on his father’s name, and change his surname. Artzybasheff did exactly that. He eventually made his way to New York City, where he began working as an engraver in 1920.
His career in America took off quickly. He became a prolific cover artist for major magazines including Time, Life, and Fortune, producing dozens of memorable images over the decades. He also illustrated around 50 books, including his own work titled As I See. His commercial clients included Casco Power Tools and Scotch Tape, among others. Artzybasheff had a rare ability to move between fine art, commercial design, and political illustration without losing his distinctive visual voice.
His work for Wickwire Spencer Steel sits in a category all its own. The company used his illustrations in wartime advertising, linking American industrial strength to the Allied cause. Artzybasheff’s style was already known for turning machines into humanoid figures — grinning engines, mechanical faces, industrial bodies with personality. For the anti-Nazi series, he reversed the concept: humans became symbols, figures became geometry, and the result was something deeply unsettling.
The illustrations portrayed Nazi soldiers, Axis leaders, and their ideological symbols in grotesque and dehumanizing ways. Faces distorted, bodies reduced to angular shapes, figures stripped of dignity and rendered as propaganda in reverse — turning the enemy’s own imagery against them. Each piece worked as both a piece of commercial art and a direct political statement.
What made Artzybasheff’s anti-Nazi work stand apart was the level of artistic invention behind each image. These were not simple cartoons. The compositions were carefully constructed, often dense with visual detail, and required a viewer to look closely before fully understanding what they were seeing. The horror of the imagery unfolded gradually — and that slow reveal made it more effective, not less.
