Judy CASSAB
Born in Vienna Austria, 1920 Died 2015
Judy Cassab AO CBE is one of Australia’s best known portrait painters and the winner of many prestigious art awards. She is the only woman to have won the Archibald twice – in 1960 for a portrait of Stan Rapotec and in 1967 for a portrait of Margo Lewers.
Cassab's work is characterized by a strong sense of colour, balance and composition. Nobody can get somebody's soul in a portrait like Cassab - she has the most incredible way of getting the physical likeness, but also the soul and the whole history of someone.
Born Judith Kaszab in Vienna, she spent her childhood in Budapest, and studied there and in Prague. After surviving World War II in Nazi-occupied Budapest by concealing her Jewish identity, in 1951 she immigrated to Sydney with her husband and children.
Cassab held her first one-woman show the following year, and became noted as a portrait painter, winning a number of coveted awards. She was commissioned to paint portraits of various members of the British royal family. From the late 1950s she occupied a prominent place in nonrepresentational art.
Judy has held more than fifty solo exhibitions in Australia, as well as others in Paris and London.
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