April 15, 2015 | by The Echo
Link to original article here
Judy
Cassab is one of the grand dames of Australian art. Born in 1920, she lived in
Hungary until 1949, and she and her family immigrated to Australia in 1951.
A
Hungarian Jew, Cassab fled Europe after 10 years of oppression at the hands of
both the fascist and communist regimes. Her family and countless friends and
loved ones perished in the Holocaust, and she arrived in Australia with her
husband Jancsi, and two young sons, John and Peter.
Cassab was
both a skilled and talented portraitist, and an artist who grabbled with the
challenges of modernism and subsequent aims to find her own artistic vision.
Cassab
was twice winner of the Archibald Prize and her portraits and abstracted
landscapes are immediately recognisable and part of an Australian
consciousness.
This
exhibition presents a more private side of Cassab’s life than that of previous
public exhibitions and commissioned portraits of leaders and luminaries.
It
includes artworks from the family’s collection, illustrated letters, and
unpublished passages from her diaries. Much of what the exhibition contains has
been part of the lives of the artist and her family, and not made with the
public in mind.
Entitled
Dear Bodhi
this exhibition provides a moving account of Cassab’s connection to the
northern rivers, gained primarily through her son, John Seed (Janos), and his
family at Bodhi Farm.
The
exhibition pays particular attention to the relationship between Judy (or Juci as she was called in the
family) and her grandson Bodhi.
These
all-consuming priorities were sometimes conflicting, which tore at her at
times. This exhibition reveals a moment when those passions overlapped.
Cassab
has been a very serious and dedicated artist who has earned a very worthy place
in the history of Australian art.
The
Northern Rivers landscape is arresting through her modernist lens, which breaks
down some of the region’s well known beauty spots and recombines elements to
avoid a mere copy or sentimental imitation of nature.
The
letters to Bodhi show another side of Cassab. They are a soft and loving
conversation with the grandson she clearly adored.
Her
diary excerpts (showing in the screen gallery) provide a rare record of the
counter-cultural movement in the Northern Rivers, and life at Tuntable Falls Community and then Bodhi Farm.
John
Seed worked out of the Northern Rivers to become a pioneering environmental
activist, involved in direct actions which have resulted in the protection of
Australian rainforests. He, Greta Seed and their son Bodhi sought their own
ideologies to live by, which were at times at odds with values of the
mainstream and the older generation (which Judy was of course part of).
This
exhibition provides a fascinating insight into this generation gap, whilst at
the same time demonstrating love, open-mindedness and intelligence across
generations.
Judy
Cassab has held more than fifty solo exhibitions in Australia, as well as
others in Paris and London. She was appointed as a Commander of the Order of
the British Empire (CBE) for her service to the visual arts in 1969, and an
Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1988.
She
was a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1980 to 1988.
Following the publication of her diaries in 1995 (which won the Kibble Award
for Literature in 1996) Cassab received an honorary Doctor of Letters (Hon.
PhD) from Sydney University.
Judy Cassab: Dear Bodhi runs from April 18 to May 23 at
the Lismore Regional Gallery.