Oscar Cahén

Oscar Cahén
Life & Work by Jaleen Grove
European Roots
Oscar Cahén’s formative years were spent in
artistic milieux characterized by great diversity of
style and approach. In the Dresden of 1932, the
German avant-garde turned to the Neue
Sachlichkeit movement, which for proponent
Otto Dix (1891–1969) meant turning back to
Northern Renaissance altarpieces and highly
detailed traditional techniques for inspiration. Dix
was concerned with social commentary, as were
many other German artists of the 1930s,
including George Grosz (1893–1959), whose
distorted, debauched figures related to
Germany’s strong tradition of caricature. At the
same time, the lessons of the Bauhaus art
school—such as the famous maxim “Less is
more!”—influenced what young designers like
Cahén were taught.
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Cahén’s versatility was further developed
in Prague, where émigré artists such as Dadaist
John Heartfield (1891–1968) gathered. Artists
Otto Dix, Portrait of Dr. Heinrich Stadelmann,
1922, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 61.0 cm, Art Gallery of
Ontario, Toronto, © Estate of Otto Dix / SODRAC
(2015)
were encouraged to diversify: graduates of the Rotter School of Advertising Art, where
Oscar Cahén worked in 1937, pursued combinations of graphic design, painting, glass,
film, children’s book illustration, photography, theatre design, and editorial illustration.
As a young painter Cahén seems to have been more interested in the psychology
of portraiture, and in recording contemporary lifestyles and places, than in challenging
the definition of “art” or breaking down form. He applied contemporary touches to
traditional forms: his early moody-looking self-portrait, conventionally drawn and
modelled, shows a proto-Cubist sensibility with Post-Impressionist colour reminiscent of
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). The “meticulously executed” drawings he exhibited
alongside his portraits and landscapes portray “the superficial life of the big city . . . lively
girls with high hats, stockings, and walking sticks.” In 1940 art historian Otto Demus
wrote that Oscar Cahén was difficult to classify because of his “Allerweltstalent”—
universal talent—but that “decorative improvisation” was his strength; the “right” Cahén
was to be found in jazz band drawings rather than in his “too-smooth portraits.” Cahén
was to fight against his prowess at almost slick drawing for the remainder of his career,
always looking for more immediate, original ways to express his inner feelings.
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George Grosz, The Hero, 1933, lithograph on
paper, 40.4 x 28.9 cm, Art Gallery of Ontario,
Toronto
Oscar Cahén, Self-portrait, c. 1930–40, oil on
board, 36 x 25 cm, The Cahén Archives,
Toronto. As a young painter Cahén seems to have
been more interested in the psychology of
portraiture than in challenging the definition of
“art”
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