Feheley Fine Arts and TrépanierBaer Gallery are delighted to announce a new reciprocal collaboration. The two galleries’ inaugural exhibition will be Discovering Oscar Cahén (1916-1956) opening April 2 through to May 10, 2020 at Centre Space, located inside Feheley Fine Arts proper at 65 George Street in Toronto.

The art and story of artist Oscar Cahén is remarkable. Born in Germany to a Jewish father and German mother, Cahén was in his early 20s during the Nazi reign. In 1940 he arrived in Canada on a prison ship and spent two years in a Quebec internment camp making drawings when he could. Four years later in 1944, he moved to Toronto to work as a magazine art director and rapidly established himself as a cutting-edge illustrator and painter. In 1953 he co-founded the Ontario-based abstract artist collective Painters Eleven. Then at the height of it all Cahén’s career was cut short—he tragically passed away in a car accident in 1956.

This exhibition of Cahén’s abstract paintings marks the first of many future collaborations between Feheley Fine Arts and TrépanierBaer Gallery. The two galleries are geographically located over 2,700 km away from each other, which means more TBG projects in Toronto and FFA artists in Calgary. “We are very excited about this collaboration as it provides platforms for satellite shows in each other’s respective cities,” says Pat Feheley, Director of Feheley Fine Arts.

A highlight of the exhibition will be Cahén’s rarely seen masterpiece The Warrior (1956), completed just before his untimely death. The piece has a history with Feheley Fine Arts which traces back to Pat’s father M.F. (Budd) Feheley, who was a champion of Painters Eleven. “In fact, Pat’s father Budd first exhibited The Warrior in his gallery, the Park Gallery, in 1959,” says Yves Trépanier, co-Director of TrépanierBaer Gallery.

Now, over sixty years later, this extraordinary artwork circles back around to its Toronto roots at Feheley Fine Arts. “I can’t think of a better partner in Toronto,” says Trépanier.