Eric Cadien Jamaican, 1954-1993
He fostered their interest in abstraction and combined it with iconography then current in Rastafarian circles. The result was imagery that paid homage to European modern art but was more deeply rooted in black nationalism.
He was initially trained as a sculptor but after returning from post-graduate studies in Canada he began to create paintings that with bold colour, clearly defined forms and self-conscious use of spatial relationships. He brought a fresh approach to Jamaican composition.Cadien’s work was informed by expressionist artists of a slightly older generation like Karl Parboosingh and Eugene Hyde and Kofi Kayiga.
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Shapes in Space #1, N.D.View more details
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Family with Bicycle, ca. 1990View more details
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Untitled, 1993 SoldView more details
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Untitled, 1993 SoldView more details
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Kids on Bicycle, 1991View more details
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King Mask, 1991View more details
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Musician Scenes, 1991View more details
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Sleeping Figure in Chair, 1991View more details
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The Wait, 1991View more details
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Two Cyclists, 1991View more details
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Two Figures in Composition, 1991View more details
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Standing Figures- 1989, 1989View more details
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The Kiss, 1988View more details
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Red & White Figures, 1987 SoldView more details
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Red Reclining Figures, 1987View more details
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Three Kings, 1987 SoldView more details
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Figures in Composition, 1986View more details
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Figures in Composition, 1986View more details
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Reclining Woman, 1986View more details
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Foggy Female Nude, 1983View more details
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Foggy Male Nude, 1983View more details
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Seated man with woman (1983), 1983View more details
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Standing couple (1983), 1983View more details
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Standing Figures, 1983View more details
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"Foggy Couple" (1982), 1982View more details
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Figure and Head in Composition, 1982View more details
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Fragmented Standing Couple, 1982View more details
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Standing Group, 1982View more details
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"Aztec Figure" 1980, 1980View more details
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Reclining Segmented Figure, 1980View more details
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Segmented Figure (1980), 1980View more details
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Segmented Figures, 1980View more details
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Three figures (1980), 1980View more details
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Segmented Figures, 1979View more details
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Fragmented Space, 1977View more details
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Figures with bicycle, 1975 SoldView more details
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Segmented Figure, 1975View more details
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"Cyclist and Friend" 1991View more details
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4 Figures in Blue BackgroundView more details
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Shapes in Space #1View more details
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Shapes in Space #2View more details
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Three Standing Figures (1983)View more details
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YouthView more details
Cadien was too young to completely identify with the concerns of Jamaica’s earliest abstract painters, neither was he a part of that later group of Expressionist painters of the eighties labelled ‘new imagists’.
Born Trelawny, Jamaica – Died Kingston, Jamaica
Eric Cadien attended the ‘art school’ during the dynamic seventies when self- reliance and self-determination became the political watch-words that guided Jamaica beyond independence towards self-government and Democratic Socialism. At the Jamaica School of Art Jerry Craig and Hope Brooks taught him, but his earliest influences in terms of style and technical development came from artists such as Winston Patrick and Osmond Watson and Kofi Kayiga.
In the last years of his life he reveled in the 2D surface, his work became more representational and the figure as nude, musician, kings and queens, created a pantheon of images rooted African and Jamaican symbolism. His work would set a precedent for those students he later tutored in experimental painting and sculpture at the Jamaica School of Art such as Omari Ra/Robert Cookhorne, Kalfani Ra/Douglas Wallace, and Stanford Watson. Cadien was too young to completely identify with the concerns of Jamaica’s earliest abstract painters, neither was he a part of that later group of Expressionist painters of the eighties labelled ‘new imagists’. The arrested development of his oeuvre due to his untimely death has allowed others to view him as an artist who bridged the two movements in the development Jamaica’s modern art. But, Cadien’s own thoughts about creativity and his paintings exhibited just prior to his death suggest that his work was still in transition and not limited to any school or style. He wrote: ‘A consistent artist is a thoughtless one, because he conforms to a style; he repeats himself and thinks in a groove. The artist must always try to understand himself, and understanding cannot come through conformity, but through self -knowledge which is always new.’