Documents, letters and photographs relating to the life and work of Samuel Zur (Szczekacz) and the artistic life of Łódź before 1939 were donated to the POLIN Museum by Hendrik A. Berinson, a German collector and owner of Galerie Berinson in Berlin. Berinson acquired the works, books, documents and photographs the artist had taken from Poland after his death. In 2009, the collector organised an exhibition of Samuel Szczekacz in Berlin and Warsaw and published the catalogue "Samuel Szczekacz 1917-1983" (Berlin 2009).
Samuel Zur (Szczekacz) was born in Łódź on 3 May 1917. His parents, Jenta (Julia), née Offenbach, and Abram Hersz (Roman) Szczekacz were the owners of Hersz Offenbach's thriving bathing establishment, located at 38 Zachodnia Street in Łódź. In addition to their son Samuel, they had daughters Halina and Natalia (Nusia) (b. 1922). Abram Hersz Szczekacz died in 1930.
Samuel first studied at the private Polish-Hebrew Yitzhak Katzenelson Boys Gymnasium and passed his final exams at the State Boys Gymnasium in 1935. In the 1934/35 school year, together with his friend Julian Lewin, he began to study drawing under Maurycy Trębacz (1861-1941). At the end of 1935, Szczekacz, Lewin and Pinkus Szwarc (Pinchas Shaar) began attending evening courses run by Władysław Strzemiński and Stefan Wegner at the Public Vocational Supplementary School No. 10 (commonly referred to as the School of Graphic Arts and Design). The young artists studied painting, graphic techniques, sculpture, photo editing, graphic design and typography. They also adopted the social stance represented by Strzemiński, his worldview and utopian beliefs in the 'unity of a common rhythm' determining the development of world perception and social change intended to lead humanity towards a better existence.
In 1938 Szczekacz went to Belgium to study architecture, a year later – in the spring of 1939 – he left for Palestine (Eretz Israel), where he began his studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He changed his name to Zur.
On leaving Poland, Szczekacz took with him a collection of lithographs and paintings, which he likely presented at his first solo exhibition at The Student Organisation of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1940. He also took a volume of Władysław Strzemiński's poetry, "Motorem słów" ("Words Catalyst"), published under the pseudonym Leon Grabowski (with a graphic design and cover by Szczekacz). When leaving Łódź, other things he took with him included keepsake photographs of Katarzyna Kobro with her daughter Monika (Nika) Strzemińska, the school's curriculum, exhibition catalogues, issues of "Forma", an album of works by Kazimierz Malewicz, Stefan Wegner's "Zasady kompozycji drukarskiej" ("Principles of Printmaking Composition"), "Druk funkcjonalny" ("Functional Printing") and Strzemiński's "Unizm w malarstwie" ("Unism in Painting").
In the late 1940s, Zur (Szczekacz) began working as an industrial designer, typographer, sculptor and architect. He designed the Israeli pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair in (1958) and the International Fair in Poznań (1966), among others. In 1983 he travelled to Paris for the exhibition 'Présences Polonaises. L'Art vivant autour du Musée de Lodz'. (23 June-26 September 1983 at the Centre Georges Pompidou). This was where Szczekacz's graphic works from the pre-war period were exhibited for the first time. The artist died suddenly of a heart attack while in Paris on 27 September 1983.
In the Museum of Art in Łódź, there is one oil painting by Szczekacz – "Cubist Composition" (1937) – and "Teka malarska" a painting portfolio from 1938, comprising sixteen lithographs: two "Neoplastic Compositions", one "Neoplastic-Cubist Composition", ten "Cubist Compositions" and three "Unistic Compositions". There is a duplicate of the portfolio, which differs slightly in the colours of individual prints.
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