Cohen's academic career was interrupted between 1941 and 1946 while he served in the U.S. Army with the 63rd Reconnaissance Troop in the European Theatre of Operations.
Cohen and his wife, lived in an Evanston 19-century house filled with paintings, books, and musical instruments (two of their three children, Susan and Frances, are professional classical musicians).
A Northwestern University faculty profile describes Cohen as "a surrealist" who "combines the metaphysical with the sensuous to express new realities of space, time, and the human figure".
In the mid-fifties, he was also a part of a "new Chicago School" that included artists Leon Golub, June Leaf and Cosmo Campoli.
George Cohen became known in the forties and fifties for his paintings and board constructions with objects and mirrors affixed to them.
He is considered a major influence on and harbinger of the Chicago Imagists, as well as an important contributor nationally to developments in painting in the fifties and sixties.