The figure in Warrior, its head shattered as if by an explosion, is a testament to the victimhood of “warriors” (conscripted soldiers) forced to participate in conflicts not of their making. With the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Cold War so fresh, Warrior functions as an archetype as expressive of the period as any abstract painting. Cahén’s friends Walter Yarwood (1917–1996) and Harold Town (1924–1990) hung Warrior in pride of place on the title wall of the Oscar Cahén Memorial Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1959.