Lot 133: OSCAR CAHÉN 1916 - 1956

OSCAR CAHÉN 1916 - 1956 UNTITLED 1955 signed and dated lower right Oscar Cahén '55 ink, pastel and watercolour on board 75.88 by 101.6 cm. 28 7/8 by 40 in.

David Burnett, Oscar Cahén, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983, p. 56, no. 58 for a related work in the collection of the AGO, reproduced

Private Collection, Florida

Private Collection, Vancouver

What Oscar Cahén brought to the artists of Toronto when he immigrated here was like an exploding hand grenade: his first-hand knowledge of the European avant-garde. Artists in Canada were not totally ignorant of what was going on elsewhere, of course, but what they knew was spotty and incomplete; even the few magazines available were in black and white. Cahén knew what the zeitgeist was and he had it in his mind and at his fingertips.

Cahén's brief but sparkling presence in Toronto, before his tragic death in a car accident in 1956, ignited the ambitions and guided the talents of the artists who were to became Painters Eleven. He jump-started them all, even though they all went in different directions in fairly short order. How indelible his influence was can be judged by those who made a career as artists and whose work has endured: Harold Town, Jack Bush, Kazuo Nakamura, Jock Macdonald, Ray Mead, and William Ronald chief among them. Cahén helped them all to be professional and confident and to stretch themselves to be original and committed. Cahén's exceptional ability fed straight into the work of all of them, and particularly Harold Town.

When we look at this work, despite its echoes of Picasso, Miro, and Klee, we see a major graphic hand and mind at work. Cahén was able to draw with amazing grace and energy. The way he has created the various shapes that are tied together and then suspended from the line across the top is a miracle of tension, like a spider's masterpiece – apparently simple but also complex and endlessly fascinating. That Cahén's work, which for years was hidden away in storage, is now being seen again, is like having a missing piece of Canadian identity restored.

This work is included in the Cahén catalogue raisonné as GFA 381.