Oscar Cahen (1916-1956) Danish/Canadian, Abstract Oil on Board. Signed and dated '56 bottom left. Signed and dated as well on the back. 

Overall Size: 13 1/4 x 15 1/4 in. 

Sight Size: 11 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. 

Oscar Cahén was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on February 8th, 1916, and studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1932 to 1933 before moving to Prague to teach art at the Rotter-Schule für Werbegrafik. He escaped the Nazi Occupation by fleeing to Europe in 1939, where he worked as an editorial illustrator and first began painting abstract works. However, he was considered German by the British, and sent to internment in Canada in 1940 as an enemy alien with other Europeans of Jewish descent. His artistic contacts in Canada secured his release in 1942, and he worked first in Montreal at the advertising firm Rapid, Grip and Batten before moving to Toronto in 1944 to become art editor for Magazine Digest. He is most celebrated as a founding member of Painters Eleven, a Toronto-based collective that challenged the conservative art world of the 1950s by championing abstraction, and worked for Maclean’s, Chatelaine, and New Liberty, winning multiple awards from the Toronto Art Directors Club. Technically innovative, he developed a unique “monoetching” process and was widely praised for his vibrant, sophisticated use of color, often pairing bold pinks and oranges, but his career was tragically cut short when he died in a car accident in 1956, just as the Painters Eleven were gaining international recognition.

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