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Abstract
Cahén's career is traceable back to
his first one-man show in Copenhagen in the 1930's (before he
was twenty), and in Canada, particularly when his work was
juried into the Annual Spring Show of the
Ontario Society of Artists in 1947.
Post '47, Cahén exhibited with a number of Societies including
the Royal Canadian Academy, the Canadian Society of Painters in
Watercolour and the Canadian Society of Graphic Art, among
others.
Oscar was also exhibiting with local artists. The income he
earned from his illustrations subsidized his abstract work. One
of the shows Oscar participated in was ‘Abstracts at Home’
in 1953. This show hung at Simpsons' in Toronto, and proved to
be a rubicon for contemporary art in Canada.
Artists in this show, including William Ronald, Jack Bush and
Jock Macdonald, would go on to form the Painters Eleven. The
Group's purpose was to provide a context for their work through
cöoperative exhibitions. Painters Eleven met to discuss
opportunities, contemporary developments and to see and critique
each others’ work.
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Untitled
FAO-329
oil on panel 10" x 12" 25.4 cm x 30.5 cm
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Some
of Cahén's earliest works are reminiscent of German religious
and figurative expressionism, with dark and moody subjects. By
the early 1950's Cahén's paintings developed a more formal
structure with broader and stronger colours reflecting the
artist's interest in contemporary painting, and followed
experimentation with cubism that would begin Cahén's exploration
of abstract forms. By 1954 Cahén's work often featured
monochromatic areas of fluid, organic forms that had lost all
traces of cubism.
Cahén's importance as an artist cannot be overstated. His
studies of colour influenced the exploration of abstraction and
a generation of artists in Canada. The value of Cahén's work
came from his freedom and integrity of immediate personal
expression. As the editor of
Canadian Art, Donald W. Buchanan explained, "Cahén does
not paint things as they are but as he is. He depicts not what
he sees but feelings the subject provokes in him”.
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