MIRIAM SACKS (1922-2004) was a South-African born textile artist and painter. She graduated with an MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Cape Town and in 1946 moved to London, UK, to join her husband. In 1951 she moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), began to paint and ran a children's art school. Following a visit to New York, where she saw ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’ tapestries, she was inspired to experiment with tapestry. 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, and drawing upon a wide range of themes influenced by her time in Africa, her heritage and wider social concerns, in a style moving between figuration and abstraction.

Sacks returned to London in 1964 and exhibited widely over the following decades, including shows at the British Embassy in Washington DC (1966) , Ben Uri Gallery (1969),  Kettles Yard (1970), Royal Festival Hall (1971), Victoria and Albert Museum (1971, 1973), South African National Gallery (1972), Leighton House (1977, 1981, 1985, 1988), and many more. Significant cultural figures such a Maxwell Fry and Herman Wouk supported her work which is now in collections in the UK, the US, South Africa, Israel, Zimbabwe and Canada. Sacks was also a prolific essayist and collector of material related to her life’s work, much of which is reproduced on this website.