Paul Cézanne | Father of Modern Art

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Paul Cézanne was an important painter in the period between Impressionism and Cubism.

Cézanne's self-portrait

Cézanne was introduced to Impressionism by Pissarro and participated in the first Impressionist exhibition. Some attribute his style to the Post-Impressionists as well, according to him. "The colors are rich to a certain extent, and the forms are made."

Mrs. Cézanne in a red armchair.

Cézanne often repeated this phrase when he spoke of his paintings. In the group of impressionist innovators, he carried out a personal artistic revolution.

Madame Cézanne

If the impressionists like Renoir, Degas or Monet were fixing the temporary momentary impressions of moving things on canvas, Cézanne was exploring the representation of nature in a timeless and unchanging form.

Men bathing

If the works of the Impressionists blurred the contour lines, Cézanne revived or re-established them. He paid great attention to showing the solidity of the object and the depth of the picture.

Woman bathing

For this reason, he completely abandoned the linear perspective introduced by Brunelleschi into the field of painting, and the sense of volume of the object regained its dominant position in painting, which was not expressed by lines, but by the author's free combination of color blocks. For this reason, Cézanne has been called the "solid school of Impressionism".

Still Life Apple Basket

It is clear that Cézanne's favorite subject matter was still life, but he also painted figures, which he treated as still lifes, and whose bodies were often treated as generalized, mechanical, monumental images rich in geometric concepts. His still life paintings are often expressed in a "columnar, spherical, and angular" manner.

player of cards

An assessment of Cézanne's art that, if not without provoking irony from the public and critics, should recognize Cézanne as the true "father of modern art, first of Fauvism and then of Cubism."

The boy in the red undershirt.

He believes that ""most of his works are the embodiment of his own artistic ideas, showing a sturdy sense of geometry, ignoring the texture of the objects and the accuracy of the shapes, emphasizing the thick and calm sense of volume and the overall relationship between the objects, and that he sometimes abandons the independence and authenticity of the individual in order to seek harmony between the various relationships.

Uncle Cézanne Dominique

In the long history of art before Cézanne, all painters focused on reproducing objective objects, while the painters themselves were slaves to the imitation of nature. Cézanne, however, gave up the traditional concepts and laws of art and relied entirely on his own independent observation, consciously turning his attention to the expression of his own subjective world, and depicting objects from a structural point of view through generalization and selection.

Madame Cézanne in a striped robe.

It was the subjectivity of Cézanne's paintings that changed the whole course of Western art, and produced a conceptual shock to the artists after him, which led to the total liberation of artistic thought. It can be said that modern art began with Cézanne.

Self-Portrait of Cézanne in a Duck Hat

On October 15, 1906, while sketching in the field, he was caught in a rainstorm and fainted from the cold, and a carriage took him home. Madame de Brémont immediately notified his wife and children, but they could not make it, and on October 22, after receiving the sacrament of death, Cézanne passed away.

Paul Cézanne Still Life