Oscar Cahén

Oscar Cahén
Life & Work by Jaleen Grove
Oscar Cahén, Untitled (Piano Player), 1943
Conté on wove paper, 50.8 x 38.1 cm
Private collection
A jazz and nightlife aficionado, Oscar Cahén
played guitar and clarinet. Gerry Waldston, who
apprenticed with Cahén at the commercial art
studio Rapid, Grip and Batten in 1944, recalls
that “he was crazy for music and when he drew
the stuff he could shake it out of his elbow like it
was nothing—nothing!” This facility is evident
in the immediate, gestural quality of his sketch of
a pianist.
In 1943 Cahén included this drawing in a
show at the Art Association of Montreal, the
city’s most prestigious art venue. The African-
American musician’s features are simplified and
exaggerated, in a manner not unlike that of
celebrity caricaturist Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003)
and Quebec political cartoonist Robert LaPalme
(1908–1997). Although the portrait’s racial
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stereotyping may be objectionable today, it was not intended to be disrespectful by 1943
standards. In the assured, graceful curves of the man’s arm, back, and dignified,
elevated head, which contrast with the jumble of the rapidly moving fingers, Cahén has
captured the musician’s self-confidence and dexterity. One reviewer commented, “Oscar
Cahén has a flair for figures in motion and succeeds very well,” while another said, “we
found [Cahén’s] rough of a boogey-woogey pianist superb.”
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In following years Cahén was often asked to illustrate glamorous nightlife. In 1956
he was living in Oakville, Ontario, but he ventured back to Montreal as an illustratorreporter
to depict its club scene. Unusually, the outing was Cahén’s idea, and drawings
were made in advance of the text—a mark of the esteem publishers held him in.
LEFT: Oscar Cahén with a guitar, c. 1945. Photograph by Geraldine Carpenter RIGHT: Oscar Cahén,
illustration for “A Night Out in Montreal,” Weekend, December 28, 1956, tearsheet
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Hiroshima Cover Illustration 1946
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