Oscar Cahén

Oscar Cahén
Life & Work by Jaleen Grove
Key Works: Untitled (384)
1. Oscar Cahén, quoted in David Mawr, “Modern Art a Reality,” Windsor Daily Star, August 29,
1955.
2. Norman McLaren’s Pen Point Percussion (1951) screened October 16, 1952; Begone Dull Care
(1949) screened October 30, 1952; Boogie Doodle (1941) screened November 20, 1952. Minutes
of Hart House Art Committee Meeting, #207, February 12, 1953. Abstraction in Canadian Art ran
October 27–November 24, 1952.
3. Art Directors Club Annual, 1957.
Significance & Critical Issues
1. Oscar Cahén, quoted in Elizabeth Kilbourn, Great Canadian Painting (Toronto: McClelland &
Stewart, 1968), 104.
2. Harold Town, Oscar Cahén Memorial Exhibition (Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1959).
3. Oscar Cahén, “Editorial Art in Canada in 1953,” 6th Annual of Editorial and Advertising Art
(Toronto Art Directors Club, 1954), 54–55.
4. Mrs. G.H. Snider, “Doodling Surrealist?” in “Vox Pop,” New Liberty, February 14, 1948, 57.
5. Paul Duval, Four Decades: The Canadian Group of Painters and Their Contemporaries, 1930–
1970 (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1972), 138. See also Cy Strom, “A Crown of Thorns: Religious
Iconography in the Art of Oscar Cahén,” paper given at the Cahén Colloquium II, April 26, 2014.
6. This view is expressed in McKenzie Porter, “Volcano with a Paint Brush,” The Standard, April 7,
1951, 18–23; and in a letter by Mimi Cahén to J. Russell Harper, December 9, 1963; J. Russell
Harper fonds, Library and Archives Canada. A sophisticated analysis of the period’s impact on
Toronto artists is found in Ihor Holubizky and Robert McKaskell, 1953 (Oshawa: Robert McLaughlin
Gallery, 2003). The identification of the German avant-garde with democracy is discussed in Keith
Holz, Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London: Resistance and Acquiescence in
a Democratic Public Sphere (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).
7. “Dream Dresses,” The Standard, May 25, 1946, 12.
8. Graham McInnes, Canadian Art (Toronto: Macmillan, 1950), 77, 105; Paul Duval, Canadian
Drawings and Prints (Toronto: Burns & McEachern, 1952), 89. See also Paul Duval, Canadian
Water Colour Painting (Toronto: Burns & McEachern, 1954).
9. “Publicity in Canada,” Gebrauchsgraphik 2 (1951): 20; Paul Arthur, “Canada: Advertising and
Editorial Art,” Graphis 10, no. 52 (1954): 100–13, 158; “Montreal Art Directors Club,”
Publimondial 53 (1953), 63; International Advertising Art, February 1951; The New York Art
Directors Club, 1951–1952 (New York: Pellegrini and Cudahy, 1952), 287.
10. Carl Dair, “New Patterns in Canadian Advertising,” Canadian Art, Summer 1952, 157.
11. Elizabeth Kilbourn, Oscar Cahén: 1916–1956 (Toronto: Jerrold Morris Gallery, 1963). Gerta
Moray, Harold Town: Life and Work (Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2014); Dennis Reid, Toronto
Painting: 1953–1965 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1972), 13; Roald Nasgaard, Abstract
Painting in Canada (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007), 98, 100; Michel DuPuy, “Douze ans de
peinture Torontoise,” unidentified newspaper, 1972.
12. Don O’Donnell, “Canadian Art’s Variety Show,” The Standard, February 4, 1950, 18–19. Royal
Canadian Academy Annual Exhibition, Art Association of Montreal, 1950.
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