Paul Cezanne

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work introduced new modes of representation and influenced avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century. Cézanne is said to have formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. While his early works are still influenced by Romanticism – such as the murals in the Jas de Bouffan country house – and Realism, Cézanne arrived at a new pictorial language through intensive examination of Impressionist forms of expression. He altered conventional approaches to perspective and broke established rules of academic art by emphasizing the underlying structure of objects in a composition and the formal qualities of art. Cézanne strived for a renewal of traditional design methods on the basis of the impressionistic colour space and colour modulation principles. Cézanne's often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects. Both Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne "is the father of us all". His painting provoked incomprehension and ridicule in contemporary art criticism. Until the late 1890s it was mainly fellow artists such as Camille Pissarro and the art dealer and gallery owner Ambroise Vollard who discovered Cézanne's work and were among the first to buy his paintings. In 1895, Vollard opened the first solo exhibition in his Paris gallery, which led to a broader examination of the artist's work. Cézanne was born on January 19, 1839, in Aix-en-Provence, France to a well-off bourgeois family. His father was a banker who supported his son's artistic aspirations. His mother was a homemaker who encouraged his creativity. Cézanne attended the Collège Bourbon (now Collège Mignet), where he met and became friends with Émile Zola, who later became a famous novelist and a key figure in the literary school of naturalism. He also pursued law studies at the University of Aix from 1858 to 1861, but decided to pursue his passion for art in Paris, where he joined the Académie Suisse and met other young artists such as Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Paul Gauguin. Cézanne's early paintings were influenced by Romanticism and Realism, depicting dark scenes with dramatic lighting and expressive brushwork. He also experimented with different styles and techniques, such as Impressionism, Pointillism, and Japanese prints. He was rejected by the official Salon several times, but he exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and 1877. However, he soon developed his own distinctive style that differed from the Impressionists' focus on capturing fleeting moments of light and colour. Instead, he sought to reveal the underlying structure and geometry of nature through simplified forms, modulated colours, and multiple viewpoints. He painted various subjects, such as landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and bathers, often returning to the same motifs throughout his career. Cézanne's work was not widely appreciated during his lifetime, but he gradually gained recognition and admiration from younger artists and critics who saw him as a pioneer of modern art. He influenced Cubism, Fauvism, Expressionism, and other movements that challenged the conventions of representation and aesthetics. He died of pneumonia on October 22, 1906, in his hometown of Aix-en-Provence, where he had spent most of his later years in solitude and dedication to his art. He was buried at the Saint-Pierre Cemetery, near the studio he had built in 1901. His work is now considered as one of the most influential and important in the history of art, and many of his paintings are displayed in museums and galleries around the world.