Oscar Cahén is one of Canada’s foremost abstract artists and one of the key figures in the Painters Eleven group. Cahén was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1916. His father, Fritz Max Cahén, was a journalist and an anti-Nazi activist, which forced him to move his family to Paris, Berlin, Stockholm and Italy. Despite a tumultuous life due to his father’s occupation, Cahén studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1932 to 1933 under Max Frey, using a false birthdate as he was underage. In 1934, at only 18, he had his first solo show in Copenhagen. He briefly taught in 1938 at the Rotter-Schule für Werbegrafik in Prague, before moving to England in 1939 to escape the Nazi occupation in Czechoslovakia. During the war, he worked as an editorial illustrator and started painting abstract works.

In May 1940, Britain was arresting young refugee men of German origin – including Cahén, who they considered German and thus an enemy alien. He was sent to Canada aboard the Ettrick and was interned in Camp N, near Sherbrooke in Quebec. He was released two years later after British intelligence found he had nothing to do with his father’s political activities. Upon his release, he found employment as an illustrator at The Standard magazine thanks to the assistance of journalist Beatrice Shapiro (now Beatrice Fischer) and Colin Gravenor. He also worked freelance for the National Film Board and the advertising firm Rapid, Grip and Batten. In 1943, the Art Association of Montreal (now the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) held a solo show of his illustrations. He met and married Mimi Levinson in 1943, and their only child, Michael, was born in 1945.

Cahén’s career as an illustrator was blooming, and in 1944, he moved to Toronto to become Magazine Digest’s art director as well as to work freelance for Macleans, Playtime, Chatelaine and New Liberty. He obtained his Canadian citizenship in 1946. Cahén was deeply involved in Toronto’s artistic community - he joined the Royal Canadian Academy of Art, the Ontario Society of Artists, the Canadian Society of Graphic Arts and the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Color. He also became part of the circle of young artists that included Walter Yarwood and Harold Town. Together, they became the Painters Eleven group, which brought abstraction to Toronto. Painters Eleven first met in 1953, and they had their first show in February 1954 at Roberts Gallery. In 1956, their works were shown in the Twentieth Annual Exhibition of American Abstract Artists with Painters Eleven of Canada at the Riverside Gallery in New York, which attracted the attention of major art critic Clement Greenberg, who visited them in Toronto a year later. Cahén earned international exposure when he was selected to exhibit at the second Bienal at the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo, Brazil.

In 2002, The Cahén archives were founded by his son Michael.