The extraordinary story of a woman who overcame living in the shadow of the holocaust to become one of Australia's most celebrated artists, told by Australia's most awarded biographer.

Judy Cassab conquered the Australian art world at a time when women artists were struggling for serious attention. Twice the winner of the Archibald Prize in the 1960s, Cassab is today one of Australia's foremost painters, celebrated for her haunting desert landscapes as well as her portraits.

But even in the midst of her triumphs, Cassab has always been shadowed by her past. Born in Vienna in 1920 to Hungarian Jewish parents, she lived through the horrors of the Second World War. Her husband taken to a labour camp and her family killed in Auschwitz, she managed to survive by hiding in Budapest. When the war was over, Cassab, her husband and two young sons migrated to Australia. But the effects of the Holocaust couldn't be left behind. Even as Cassab's professional success grew, her private world remained fragile.

Cassab's is a life of struggle: to survive war, persecution and exile; to make a place for herself in Sydney as a migrant and an artist; and to hold together a loving but difficult marriage. Yet the Judy Cassab we see through her paintings is strong and vibrant. And in this intimate biographical portrait, what we see more than anything is a woman of overriding passion, resilience and amazing determination.