Judy Cassab: from Hungary to Australia to the world

There are two ways of understanding the contribution a painter has made to art history. One could directly examine the painter’s works. Alternatively one could read about everything that the painter has ever done, from birth on, to make sense of her art.

Brenda Niall was an academic in Monash’s English Dept and must have thought herself very fortunate choosing Judy Cassab as a subject. Since her earliest adolescent years, Cassab kept a daily diary which has been translated into English and published (Random House 1996).

Judy Kaszab was born in Vienna in 1920. In 1929 the Kaszab family returned to their native Hungary where her pa­rents separated and so the youngster spent her childhood living with extended family. She eventually attended art classes at the Academy of Art in Prague and while still a teenager, married Jansci Kampfner. Niall captured the uncertainties of Jewish life in pre-war Europe beaut­ifully: the fam­ily ties, poverty, labour camps, mounting anti Semitism. Once the war broke out, Judy survived the most extraordinary circumstances as an art student in Budapest and as a working artist. It seems inevitable to even the most casual reader of Holocaust history that Cassab’s adult life and work would be affected by starvation, hiding in cellars and surviving bombs. As would Cassab’s identity as a Jew.

Cassab’s sons were born in Hungary, where she was able to paint in peace and safety. But in 1949 the family again came to grief, this time at the hands of the Communists. The time for migrat­ion to Australia had come. Niall spent the rest of the book (Chapters 6-15) dis­cuss­ing the ship journey, early adaptation to Anglo Saxon society, Cassab’s trips, and her maturity as an Australian citizen and artist.

Her career flourished quickly. 3 paintings were accepted for the 1952 exhibition of the Society of Artists. A solo exhibit­ion at Macquarie Galleries in 1955 was even more significant. The name Cassab appeared briefly in Sydney newspapers and on ABC arts radio programmes. Yet the sometimes depressed Hungarian refugee had to rely on her ties with other European immigrants for company and support. 

Amazingly, these contacts were her passport into the domains of the wealthy. She became best known as a portrait painter and won import­ant prizes in this genre, including the biggest prize of all, the Archibald Prize. Twice (in the 1960s)! Her growing reputation as a portraitist meant that her works were being hung in public buildings. The list of people who sat for Cassab would read like a Who’s Who of Australian talent eg Dame Leonie Kramer. I particularly enjoyed the sensitive images of Stanislaus Rapotec, Margo Lewers, Paul Haefliger which were printed in this book. What a shame there were not more.

Yet Paul Haefliger believed that Cassab’s talent for the figurative, com­bined with her urge to please as a portraitist, would self destruct. Cassab herself had no impulse towards abstract art. And her landscapes gave her little pleasure.

Niall suggested that it was the colours and shapes of the Australian desert that changed Cassab’s life as an artist. Unfortunately there were only a few examples of her new art style reprinted in the book. And another thing. Paintings should be distributed throughout the book, inserted into the relevant text. This may increase the print­ing costs, but in art history, surely text should not dominate images.

Cassab was made a trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW in 1980, only the second woman artist ever chosen. This was an impressive achievement for an artist who had faced anti Semitism, sexism and poverty for half her life.