Cecil Higgs

1898 - 1986   THABA NCHU    SOUTH AFRICA

CECIL HIGGS  became a boarder at the Wesleyan Girls' High School in Grahamstown in 1916. She briefly enrolled in the Grahamstown School of Art in 1918,  sailed to England in 1920 and stayed abroad for 13 years. She trained in London at the Byam Shaw School of Art, at Goldsmiths' College and from 1926 at the Royal Academy of Arts studying under WALTER SICKERT.

In December 1931 left the Royal Academy to continue her studies at the London Art School. She subsequently studied at the Grande Chaumière in Paris, under André Lhote, and worked in various studios around the city. While in Europe, she exhibited with both the London Group and the new English Art Club.

She was called back to South Africa due to the illness of her mother who died in 1934.

CECIL HIGGS held her first solo exhibition in the Domestic Science hall of Stellenbosch University in 1935, meeting the painter Wolf Kibel and the sculptor Lippy Lipshitz. In 1938 held a joint exhibition with Rene Graetz, Maggie Laubser and Lippy Lipshitz.

CECIL HIGGS was awarded the gold medal of the "Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie van Wetenskap en Kuns" in1964