PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Toronto
Sold sale of Canadian Post-War & Contemporary Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 26, 2009, lot 8
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
David Burnett and Marilyn Schiff, Contemporary Canadian Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983, page 49
Jaleen Grove et al., Oscar Cahén, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, 2017, reproduced page 82 and listed page 304, catalogue raisonné #58

EXHIBITED
Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, Oscar Cahén: First American Retrospective Exhibition, September 30 - November 10, 1968, catalogue #42

Oscar Cahén arrived in Canada from England in 1940 and worked as an illustrator in Montreal. His career as a painter, stimulated by his friendship with Harold Town and Walter Yarwood, truly began with his arrival in Toronto in 1946, and he became one of the bright stars of Painters Eleven. His earliest works from that period reflect the influence of both Abraham Rattner and British artist Graham Sutherland. This provocative work from the 1950s exhibits the strong, sharp, graphic strokes and bright palette that came to characterize his images. Cahén’s training and skill as a graphic designer added to his ability to handle a broad range of media. He was able to move between figurative and purely abstract work with ease and assurance. David Burnett and Marilyn Schiff wrote, “His work…was not gestural in the sense of the broad, sweeping brushwork of contemporary American Abstract Expressionism, but more closely structured along the lines of contemporary European and British painting. It reflects…a talent that was not and could not be restricted to one particular mode of approach.”

All prices are in Canadian Dollars