25th Jun, 2025 19:00
Modern & Contemporary Art
36
Cecily Sash (South Africa 1925-2019)
Minoan Composition
acrylic on board
Artwork date: 1966
Signature details: signed and dated bottom right
Exchange Rates*: USD 5429.01 – 8143.52
EURO 4933.65 – 7400.48
GBP 4151.96 – 6227.93
R100,000 - R150,000
Buyers Premium
acrylic on board
Artwork date: 1966
Signature details: signed and dated bottom right
Exchange Rates*: USD 5429.01 – 8143.52
EURO 4933.65 – 7400.48
GBP 4151.96 – 6227.93
(1)
120 x 90.5 cm; framed size: 136 x 106 x 2 cm
Provenance:
Private collection, Pretoria.
Notes:
By the mid-1960s, Cecily Sash was an established artist, exhibiting both locally and internationally. She was also the only female founding member of the influential Amadlozi Group. Sash developed a bold and dynamic style rooted in the design principles and disciplined approach of the Bauhaus. Her work incorporated an iconography of abstracted forms derived from perceptual reality. In the 1960s, travels to the UK and USA on an Oppenheimer Grant brought her into contact with leading developments in abstraction. Strongly influenced by Op Art pioneers such as Bridget Riley, Sash evolved a distinctive, intellectually rigorous formalism, often enriched with metaphysical ideas. This painting, with its flowing, coiling lines rendered in flat, vibrant colours, belongs to a significant series in which Sash referenced ancient decorative motifs found in early Minoan and Cretan pottery.
COLLECTOR'S NOTE:
- In 1967, the year after Cecily Sash created this work, she was selected to exhibit at the São Paulo Biennale alongside Dumile Feni and Cecil Skotnes.
- Sash was one of 11 artists included in the South African Artists Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1965 in London. The year prior, she showed at the Venice
Biennale of 1964.
COLLECTIONS:
The artist is represented in numerous local collections, notably, the Durban Art Gallery; Hester Rupert Art Museum, Graaff-Reinet; Johannesburg Art Gallery; King George VI Art Gallery, Gqeberha; Javett Art Centre, Pretoria; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; University of Natal, Durban; University of South Africa, Pretoria and the William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley.
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Auction: Modern & Contemporary Art, 25th Jun, 2025
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