Cecily Sash was born with Scottish and Jewish heritage in Delmas, South Africa in 1924. Moving to London, she studied at Chelsea Polytechnic and Camberwell School of Art between 1948 and 1949. After permanently settling in the Welsh Marches in 1974, Sash regularly taught art to adults and children locally in Herefordshire for more than three decades, and, most notably, founded Leominster's first painting school, The Granary, in 1979.
Artist and teacher Cecily Sash was born to a Scottish mother, Bessie Sash (nee Liverman) and Dr Max Sash in Delmas, South Africa in 1924. Sash showed a talent for art from an early age, leading to her eventually studying under Maurice van Essche at Witwatersrand Technical Art School in Johannesburg (1943–46), and then in London at Chelsea Polytechnic under Henry Moore and at Camberwell School of Art with Victor Pasmore (1948–49). Returning to South Africa to continue her studies in Fine Art at Wits University (1952–54), Sash later became one of the co-founders of the Johannesburg-based Amadlozi Group which was formed in 1963. A collective comprising artists including Cecil Skotnes, Edoardo Villa, Sydney Kumalo and Giuseppe Cattaneo, and represented by gallerist Egon Guenther, Amadlozi sought to work at the intersection of African and European artistic traditions. Sash was working with mosaic, paint and tapestry at this point, but while her style was initially decorative and representational, she had begun to put more emphasis on modernist abstraction. In 1965 Sash was one of 11 artists included in the South African artists’ exhibition held at the Grosvenor Gallery, London. Having lectured in Fine Art at Wits University since 1954, in 1974 Sash gave up her successful teaching career in South Africa and returned to the UK in exile: ‘feeling threatened by the apartheid regime’ (Kirkby, 2019).
Settling in the Welsh Marches, Sash continued to exhibit in the UK, France and back in her native South Africa. Her painting moved comfortably between linear objectivity, material experimentation and bold, decorative abstraction. Although her art practice had been formulated by the themes, colours, and ‘Highveld palette’ of the South African landscape, due to her Scottish ancestry, ‘the British experience had always beckoned’ (Petherbridge, 1993). In 1978 she held her first solo exhibition in the UK at The Gallery, Perrins Lane, Hampstead, London NW3, and in 1984, reflecting her Jewish heritage, she showed at Ben Uri with sculptor, Robert Erskine. Barry Fealdman, art critic of the Jewish Chronicle and Ben Uri's indefatigable secretary observed that the Hampstead show 'though small, reveals her as an artist of considerable attainment' (Jewish Chronicle, April 1978). As well as national and international exhibitions, Sash regularly engaged with events and arts education in her local Herefordshire. In 1979 she opened Leominster’s first painting school, The Granary, where she taught for many years. She also set up a studio at her home in Herefordshire, where she gave private lessons to many art students. Sash’s works at this time continued to be influenced by her South African heritage, and eventually she moved to Presteigne in Wales in 1993, as she was drawn to a bleakness in the Welsh landscape that was reminiscent of her homeland. It was there that she began what was informally called ‘The Thursday Group’; a weekly meeting of artists who gathered at ‘Studio Sash’. Teaching using the methodology and discipline of ‘Basic Design’ from the Bauhaus tradition, Sash’s sessions involved the ‘rigorous criticism of each other’s works’, serious art historical discussion, and ‘chat about music and literature’ which was often ‘amusingly peppered with a little local gossip’ (Britnell, 2014). The first study of her work, Cecily Sash: Working Years, was published by Studio Sash in 1999. Continuing her teaching and local community work, Sash held painting and drawing classes for children on Saturday mornings at this time and, in 2001, Sash gave a talk, Teaching Children to Paint, in Presteigne. In 2003, she participated in Desert Island Art with former BBC producer, Brenda Reid; held in the church hall at Knighton, Herefordshire as part of the town’s annual community arts festival, Sash selected which eight works of art she would take with her to a desert island.
Continuing to exhibit her works in the 2000s, Sash’s paintings were shown regularly at the Millinery Works, a gallery venue located within a former Islington hat factory in north London, and she exhibited in a group show at the Harris Gallery, Poole, Dorset in 2009. Sash's monograph on Jean Miller’s paintings was published by the Ludlow-based Excellent Press in 2008, and the second study of her own work, Cecily Sash: Artist and Teacher, was published by Millinery Works Gallery in 2013. Cecily Sash died in Presteigne, Wales in 2018, aged 94. Her works are not currently held in any UK public collections. However, a selection of her works were exhibited posthumously in the Presteigne Assembly Rooms in 2022.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Cecily Sash]
Publications related to [Cecily Sash] in the Ben Uri Library