Cassab, Judy (1920-2015), was an Austrian-born Australian painter known for her portraits and her landscapes of Australian deserts. Cassab painted in the expressionist style. Expressionists created images of nature or reality modified or distorted by the artist’s own reactions to the scene. Cassab is known for her strong sense of color balance and composition. She painted portraits of friends and family along with members of the British, Indian, and Thai royal families. Cassab began painting landscapes, particularly landscapes of central Australia , in the late 1950’s.
Cassab was born Judit Kaszab on Aug. 15, 1920, in Vienna , Austria , to Jewish Hungarian parents. Cassab started painting at the age of 12. She enrolled at the Academy of Art in Prague in 1938. One year later, her studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945). To avoid persecution by the Nazis for being a Jew , she posed as a Catholic maid serving her family.
In 1951, Cassab, her husband, and their two sons immigrated to Sydney , Australia. In 1953, she held her first solo exhibition. She went on to mount more than 70 solo exhibitions throughout her career. In 1960, she achieved widespread recognition when she won the Archibald Prize , an Australian prize for portrait painting. In 1967, Cassab was awarded a second Archibald Prize, becoming the first woman to win the prize twice. She won the awards for her portraits of the Australian artists Stanislaus Rapotec and Margo Lewers. In 1969, Cassab was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 1988, she was made an Officer of the Order of Australia . In 2011, she was awarded Hungary’s Gold Cross of Merit.
In addition to being a painter, Cassab was an accomplished diarist (writer of diaries). In 1996, she won the Nita B. Kibble Literary Award for her published diaries. Cassab died on Nov. 3, 2015.
