Who is Eric Cadien?

Answer 1

Born: 1954, Trelawny, JAMAICA-Killed in 1993 Educated at Jamaica School of Art (Diploma Painting, 1954), Ontario College of Art, Canada ( M.F.A., 1978) Major Professional Appointments 1981-1993 Tutor Sculpture and Experimental Painting, Jamaica School of Art, Kingston, Jamaica Solo Exhibitions 1976-77 Bolivar Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica1980 Diplomat Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica 1985 Mutual Life Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica 1986 Mutual Life Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica 1987 Mutual Life Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica 1988 Mutual Life Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica1992 Major Group Exhibitions 1975 All Island Exhibition of Painting, Institute of Jamaica, Kingston1975 Contemporary Jamaican Art, New Orleans, USA1973 Three Artists, Gallery 76, Toronto 1978-80, 82-92 Annual National Exhibition, The National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston 1981 Jamaica School of Art Staff Exhibition, Diplomat Gallery, Kingston 1981 EricCadien, Cecil Cooper, Fitz Harrack, Gene Pearson, Diplomat Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica 1981 Twenty Jamaican Artists 1974-1981, Jamaican High Commission, Ottawa, Canada1981-2 Jamaica Festival Art Exhibition, Upstairs, Downstairs Gallery, Kingston 1983 Jamaica School of Art Staff Exhibition, Icon Gallery, Trinidad 1983 Aspects 1 , National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston 1984 Inaugural Exhibition, Makonde Gallery, Kingston Jamaica1986 Jamaica School of Art Staff Exhibition, Contemporary Art Centre. Kingston Jamaica 1987 The Spirit of Jamaica, Gallery Antigua, Miami, USA 1989 Eric Cadien, Cecil Cooper, Richard Fatta, Contemporary Art Centre Kingston, Jamaica 1990 Forty Years: Edna Manley School for the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston1990 Jamaican Art, Germany 1991 Out of Many One People, Virginia Miller Gallery, Coral Gables, Miami1991 Eric Cadien, Gene Pearson, Galerie Malreaux, Los Angeles 1992 1492/1992 Un Nouveau Regard Sur Les Caraibes, Espace Carpeaux, Courbevoie, France and touring in the Caribbean 1992 Jamaica to Brooklyn 1992, Salena Gallery, Brooklyn 1992 Jamaican Art, Marpad Gallery, Coral Gables, Miami Honours and Awards 1973 First Prize Texaco Mural Competition 1976 First Recipient of the Karl Parboosingh Fellowship 1976 Trelawny Festival Carifesta Award 1976 National Gallery of Jamaica Purchase Award1981 Silver Medal (Painting), Festival Fine Art ExhibitionPublications ARCHER-STRAW, P. & ROBINSON, K., JAMAICAN ART: AN OVERVIEW (1990) BOXER, David EDNA MANLEY: SCULPTOR: National Gallery of Jamaica ad the Edna Manley Foundation, Kingston, 1990 BOXER, D. & POUPEYE, V., MODERN JAMAICAN ART, Ian Randle, Kingston (1998)Cadien (exh.cat.) MUTUAL LIFE GALLERY (Artist's Publication), Kingston, 1992 NATIONAL GALLERY OF JAMAICA: DAVID BOXER: A TRIBUTE, NGJ, KINGSTON, 1995 POUPAYE, VEERLE, CARIBBEAN ART, London: Thames & Hudson, 1998 Artist Review - Eric Cadien 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. 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. 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. 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.' He was unfortunely killed at the peak of his career in 1993.

Answer 2

Eric Cadien was a Jamaican artist. He was born in 1954 in Trelawny, Jamaica and died in 1993. Cadien was best known for his paintings, but was trained originally as a sculpturer.