Cahén is best known as a member of Painters Eleven, a group of abstract artists active in Toronto from 1953-1960, and for his fifteen years of work as an illustrator for Canadian magazines.
His artistic contacts in Canada secured his release in October 1942, and he worked in Montréal at advertising firm Rapid, Grip and Batten before moving to Toronto in late 1944 to become art editor for Magazine Digest.
[2][3] Nevertheless, Painters Eleven attracted U.S. exposure with a successful exhibition, Twentieth Annual Exhibition of American Abstract Artists with 'Painters Eleven' of Canada in 1956, with the American Abstract Artists at the Riverside Museum in New York,[4] and were praised by the influential critic Clement Greenberg on a visit he paid to the group in Toronto in 1957.
[1] Perhaps his most original contribution was a technique he called “monoetching,” which involved applying a thin layer of wax to an illustration board which he then scratched through with a needle.
[1] However, more than any other of his talents, Cahén is probably best remembered today for his colour sense, as his best known works often combined orange and pink along with reds, blues and greens.