Oscar Cahén

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Oscar Cahén Life & Work by Jaleen Grove 30 artist. A review noted that Cahén “works by many methods, in many styles, and with many subjects . . . there are good designs . . . neat caricatures and remarkably good and suggestive sketches of heads and figures.” Earlier the same year Cahén had joined the Montreal office of Rapid, Grip and Batten, where he was the highest paid artist, at $90 a week. 32 In 1943 American officials told Oscar that Fritz Max was mentally ill and required “chemical therapy,” and could be deported back to Nazi-controlled Europe. His mother, meanwhile, was stuck in England, where she now worked for the BBC. Despite these traumas, Oscar’s personal life improved. 31 33 Stability in Toronto Although he retained his love for Beatrice, in 1943 Oscar met and married Martha (Mimi) Levinsky, daughter of a Polish rabbi, who had spent her childhood in the Netherlands. Sadly for Mimi, her Orthodox parents disowned her for marrying Oscar. Their only child, Michael, was born May 8, 1945; Michael—affectionately nicknamed The Noodnik and The Monster— appeared in several cover designs for Maclean’s and other magazines. In late 1944 Oscar Cahén moved to Toronto to become art director for Magazine Digest. He introduced cheerful covers and interior cartoons and, in utter contrast, two gutwrenching visual essays concerning impoverished Native Americans and orphaned children in Europe. Cahén began to put down roots, building a rustic house and studio himself on Fogwood Farm near King City (just north of Toronto) in 1946. The families of illustrator Frank Fog (1915–unknown) and art director Bill Kettlewell (1914–1988) already had houses there. That same year he was granted Canadian citizenship; in June 1947 his mother arrived from England. With the stability of steady freelance income and a home of his own at last, Cahén gave up Magazine Digest and began painting for himself. It was finally safe to process the years of exile and war, and he “began to release fine frenzies in paint [that] if left pent-up torment him to the point of nervous breakdown,” as one news feature put it. Fritz Max, still not well, was at first not permitted and was then unwilling to join his 37 wife and son in Canada. Perhaps these painful facts informed Oscar’s images of suffering families and grief, their bodies marked with savage, heavy strokes. Paintings from this time, known only from inscribed photographs, depict an emaciated Holocaust victim and a drowned woman. During the late 1940s Cahén also produced a series of paintings and mixed-media works on Christian themes, including the largest canvas he had completed to date, the highly Cubist The Adoration, 1949. 34 36 Michael, Oscar, and Mimi at their home in King Township, 1951 35 Oscar Cahén, Magazine Digest cover design, c. 1946, printer’s proof, The Cahén Archives, Toronto 10
Oscar Cahén Life & Work by Jaleen Grove Photograph of lost painting, captioned “This is Belsen inmate” on reverse, c. 1946 Despite the darkness within, the charismatic Cahén hosted weekly summer 38 gatherings, and his social circle expanded happily to include artists and designers Harold Town (1924–1990), Walter Trier (1890–1951), Albert Franck (1899–1973), and Walter Yarwood (1917–1996). Prosperity and Prominence Around 1949 Cahén began exploring wholly abstract forms, establishing his personal vocabulary of crescents, spikes, ovoids, and hot, startling colour by 1952. He also explored printmaking and ceramics. His time seems to have been split fairly evenly between illustrating and painting, the former providing the financial stability and social prominence that allowed him to be as experimental as he wanted in his self-directed works. 11
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Oscar Cahén

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