In 1955 construction began on Imperial Oil’s executive offices at 111 St. Clair Avenue West, in Toronto, a landmark high-rise that accommodated 1,200 people. Oscar Cahén was commissioned to design the eighth-floor cafeteria and lounge area. It was a highly prestigious assignment, for which Cahén was paid a princely $7,200 (a man working in manufacturing made about $5,000 a year). Intended to enliven this space of leisure, Cahén’s barb and crescent forms interact playfully with wide fields of pastel and vivid colours. He completed the commission just days before his death on November 26, 1956. After Cahén’s death, other artists, such as Cahén’s fellow Painters Eleven member Jack Bush (1909–1977), would go on to develop similar approaches, in colour-field painting and what New York critic Clement Greenberg termed Post-Painterly Abstraction.