Strauss & co - 2017 Boerneef

52 CECILY SASH 1924- Target Composition I circa 1973 printed with the artist’s name and title on a label adhered to the reverse oil on canvas 122,5 x 183,5 cm EXHIBITED Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, Cecily Sash Retrospective 1954-1974 , catalogue number 91, illustrated in colour in the catalogue centrefold. Kilbourn Collection Greatly admired as a pioneering artist and teacher, Delmas-born Cecily Sash was trained by Maurice van Essche in Johannesburg and Victor Passmore in London. A founding member of art dealer Egon Guenther’s Amadlozi Group of artists, in 1965 she spent a year studying art education in Britain and the United States, notably interviewing abstract painter and teacher Josef Albers. 1 On her return to Johannesburg, where she taught design at the University of the Witwatersrand, Sash became a committed proponent of hard-edged abstraction in painting. In a 1968 interview with Robert Hodgins, Sash rationalised her internationalism as follows: “What we must be careful of is not to be afraid of our borrowings. I think myself that there is a sort of over-anxious desire for national art in this country.“ 2 Sash’s commitment to pure abstraction was however short-lived in the early 1970s, she returned to figurative subjects, notably the bird. An enduring motif in her work, Sash began depicting birds in 1955 after a dove flew unto the art room where she gave classes at Jeppe Girls’ High. 3 This work forms part of a series known as Bird and Target (1973-74) Sash here integrates the vibrant palette and linear styling of her earlier hard-edged abstractions into a self- described “metaphysical” painting that visualises her personal crisis – she emigrated to England in 1974 due to this country’s segregationist politics. “The target was on the bird originally as a decorative device which derived from my tapestry designs in 1973,” explained Sash, adding that here it however served as “a symbol of destruction”. 4 Esmé Berman has remarked on the dual role of the avian symbols in this body of work: “concurrently victims and aggressors, their weapons are their vicious claws and beaks, but their wings have been replaced by brightly coloured targets”. 5 Sash recognised this ambiguity: she has described her target- festooned birds as both monumental and vulnerable.” 6 1 Sash interviewed Albers in December 1965, transcript in the archives of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. 2 Hodgins, Robert, ‘South African Art: Has it Made it?’ News/Check , 20 December 1968, page 16 3 Harmsen, Frieda. (1985) Looking at South African Art , Pretoria: JL van Schaik, page 33 4 Sash, Cecily. (1999) Working Years , Presteigne: Studio Sash, page 44 5 Berman, Esmé. (1993) Painting in South Africa , Johannesburg: Southem Book Publishers, page 272 6 Sash, op.cit., page 45 Source: Strauss & Co Auction Catalogue, Johannesburg, November 2015