Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1922 Cape Town, South Africa

Died: 2004 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1964

Biography

Painter and textile artist, Miriam Sacks was born into a Jewish family in Cape Town, South Africa in 1922. After studying for an MA in Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, she moved to the UK in 1946. After four years she left for Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she ran a children’s art school from 1950–56, afterwards travelling extensively in the USA. From 1958–63 she developed her own individual, experimental technique to create tapestries, or ‘woven images’. Using needle and thread, in the manner of a painter using brushes and paints, these images drew upon a wide range of themes, influenced by her time in Africa, her heritage, and wider spiritual concerns, in a style moving between figuration and abstraction. Sacks was also painting in this period, and one painting was chosen for the Central African Federation Art Exhibition at the Imperial Institute, London (forerunner to the Commonwealth Institute) in 1957, while several paintings and tapestries were chosen for the same exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, London in 1961. Sacks returned to the UK in 1964 with her husband (they later divorced) and her two daughters.

Sacks held her first solo show in London at the William Ware Gallery in 1966, two years after her return. Now better established as an artist since her time in the UK two decades before, she began to exhibit regularly, and was invited to send her work on a touring exhibition of the USA, including a showing in the Rotunda of the British Embassy, Washington in 1966. A significant show in London was her solo exhibition, Tapestries by Miriam Sacks at Ben Uri Art Gallery, opened by Professor Maxwell Fry, noted modernist architect, in 1969. The exhibition was thematically centred around the human struggle with identity in a mechanised world. Peter Stone of the Jewish Chronicle described the exhibition as ‘the best show I can remember there’, and that Sacks’ tapestries ‘are imaginative conceptions with depth as well as structure and rhythm’ (Stone, 1969). The exhibition also provided the catalyst for an interview with The Times the same year, in which Sacks described her amazement at ‘the number of men who do show an interest in my work’, and that ‘I feel I belong nowhere and everywhere both in my work and in life’ (Hunter-Symon, 1969). She later held the Miriam Sacks: Old and New Tapestries show at the Prudhoe Gallery, London in 1973. For this Stone once again recorded his admiration, particularly at the way Sacks ‘uses neither loom or cartoon’ and ‘carries the whole design in her head’, which links her tapestries ‘even more with modern painting’ (Stone, 1973).

A close relationship between Sacks and Leighton House in Holland Park, London began in 1977. She held a show there that year, Miriam Sacks: Tapestries, Drawings and Watercolours, of which Barry Fealdman (Ben Uri's secretary and art critic of the Jewish Chronicle described it as marking ‘a further stage in her development since she substituted needle and thread for brush and paint’. He continued that her ‘textures have become richer, the threads of varying lengths and densities combining to create an harmonious whole’ (Fealdman, 1977). An exhibition of the same name was held at Leighton House again in 1981, and she presented Miriam Sacks: Tapestries Old and New, Drawings and Watercolours there in 1985. This time, her work moved towards an interest in the ‘musical motif’ by interweaving ‘textures and colours to suggest note values and sounds.’ The exhibition showcased the contrast between her previous ‘robot-like’ work and the ‘benign aspect’ of her more recent work, expressing ‘her hope for the restoration of the balance between nature and the man-made machines of our age’ (Fealdman, 1985).

Miriam Sacks died in London, England in 2004. Her wall tapestry Fugue (1968) was included in the exhibition, New Acquisitions and Long-term Loans, at Ben Uri Gallery in 2020. In 2024 a dedicated website exploring her life and career was established (https://www.miriamsacks.com/).

Related books

Barry Fealdman, 'A Real Feeling for Character', Jewish Chronicle, 1 November 1985, p. 17
Miriam Sacks, 'Hand-Woven Tapestries on Canvas Dealing with My Concerns about the Life of People in Industrial Societies', Leonardo, Vol. 14, No. 4, 1981, pp. 271-275
Barry Fealdman, 'Menace of the Machine', Jewish Chronicle, 16 December 1977, p. 10
David Coombs, 'Miriam Sacks', The Connoisseur, Vol. 183, Iss. 735-736, 1973, p. 90
Peter Stone, 'Imitations at a Cost', Jewish Chronicle, 4 May 1973, p. 32
Maxwell Fry, Tapestry and Architecture: An Address Given at the Opening of an Exhibition of Tapestries by Miriam Sacks at the Ben Uri Gallery (London: Keepsake P., 1970)
Peter Stone, 'Man's Struggle Stitched with Subtlety', Jewish Chronicle, 31 October 1969, p. 25
Penny Hunter-Symon, 'Artist with a Needle', The Times, 20 October 1969, p. 11
Miriam Sacks, 'The Exploring Needle', London Polytechnic, November 1968

Selected exhibitions

New Acquisitions and Long-term Loans, Ben Uri Gallery, London (2020)
Miriam Sacks: Exhibition of Hand-Woven Tapestries, Etz Chayim Gallery, Northwood & Pinner Liberal Synagogue, London (2006)
Brighton Festival, Sussex Arts Club (2004)
Miriam Sacks: Tapestries Old and New, Drawings and Watercolours, Leighton House, London (1985)
Miriam Sacks: Tapestries, Drawings and Watercolours, Leighton House, London (1981)
Miriam Sacks: Tapestries, Drawings and Watercolours, Leighton House, London (1977)
Miriam Sacks: Old and New Tapestries, Prudhoe Gallery, London (1973)
Tapestries by Miriam Sacks, Ben Uri Art Gallery, London (1969)
Miriam Sacks: Tapestry and Art: A New Approach, Royal Festival Hall, London (1968)
Miriam Sacks, William Ware Gallery, London (1966)
Miriam Sacks, British Embassy, Washington DC, USA (1966)
Central African Exhibition, Commonwealth Institute, London (1961)
Central African Exhibition, Imperial Institute, London (1957)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Miriam Sacks]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Miriam Sacks artist