He arrived at New York with his mother, Konstancja, and sister, Alfreda, on June 27, 1907;[3] they then went to Chicago to join his father, Dyonizy Szukalski, a blacksmith.

[5] A year later, Sculptor Antoni Popiel persuaded Szukalski's parents to send him back to Poland,[5] to enroll at Kraków's Academy of Fine Arts in 1910.

[10]: 56–66  The polarized atmosphere led the monument committee to arrange for a new contest, this time limited to concepts by artists who were invited to participate.

He completed several sculptures, most notably the monument of Bolesław Chrobry, and decorated the façade of the Silesian Museum in Katowice, as well as a local government building in that city.

[14]: 242  It contained many of his intricate paintings and massive sculptures, notable for their dramatic mythological imagery;[18] Szukalski had brought much of his lifetime work with him to Poland.

In 1940, Szukalski and his wife settled in Los Angeles where he did odd jobs in film studios, designing scenery; occasionally sculpting and drawing.

During the last years of his 75-year-long career Szukalski's major projects in sculpture were Prometheus (1943), designed for Paris in homage to French partisans, the Rooster of Gaul (1960), a gigantic and complex structure that he wanted the U.S. to give France to reciprocate for the Statue of Liberty.

[18] Following Szukalski's death in 1987, a group of his admirers spread his ashes on Easter Island, in the rock quarry of Rano Raraku.

Beginning in 1940, Szukalski devoted most of his time to examining the mysteries of prehistoric ancient history of mankind, the formation and shaping of languages, faiths, customs, arts, and migration of peoples.

Through his research in these subjects, Szukalski claimed to have discovered Polish origins for various ancient places and people, in a language called Protong.

The culmination of this work was a massive book called Protong (in Polish, Macimowa), its writing continued uninterruptedly for over 40 years.

He claimed that the figures of the god Pan on Greek vases depict creatures that actually existed, the product of Yeti apes raping human women.

Szukalski used his considerable artistic talents to illustrate his theories, which, despite their lack of scientific merit, have gained a cult following largely on their aesthetic value.

[20] Among Szukalski's admirers are Leonardo DiCaprio, who sponsored a retrospective exhibition entitled "Struggle" at the Laguna Art Museum in 2000;[6] the Church of the SubGenius, which incorporates the Yetinsyny elements of Zermatism;[21] Rick Griffin,[22] Richard Sharpe Shaver, Robert Williams, H. R. Giger[23] the band Tool[24] and Ernst Fuchs,[25] who said "Szukalski was the Michelangelo of the 20th century.

In addition to the Laguna retrospective, notable exhibitions of his work include "The Self-Born" at Varnish Fine Art, San Francisco, in 2005, and "Mantong and Protong," where Szukalski is paired with another unorthodox theorist of earth history, Richard Sharpe Shaver, at Pasadena City College in 2009.

In 2018, Leonardo DiCaprio produced a documentary entitled Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski,[6] which was released on Netflix as of December 21, 2018.