Paul Cézanne

Provence (France)

Cézanne came from Aix-en-Provence, whose light and landscape he painted all his life.

💡 Did you know? His schoolfriend was the writer Émile Zola: the friendship later broke over a novel.

the structure of things

Cézanne sought to reduce nature to basic forms like the sphere, cone and cylinder.

💡 Did you know? He wanted to grasp nature "through the cone, the sphere and the cylinder".

father of modern art

Picasso and Matisse revered him.

💡 Did you know? Both Picasso and Matisse reverently called Cézanne „the father of us all.“

Mont Sainte-Victoire

The mountain lay near his home town of Aix.

💡 Did you know? Cézanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire over 60 times: ever more abstract, almost to pure planes of colour.

still lifes (apples, fruit)

With apples and jugs Cézanne studied form and colour for years: „With an apple I will astonish Paris.“

💡 Did you know? A simple apple became for him a study of form and space.

1906

Cézanne painted outdoors to the last; in 1906 a storm caught him at work, and he died soon after of pneumonia.

💡 Did you know? He kept painting in a storm and died of the resulting pneumonia.

The Card Players

From the 1890s: an icon of modern art.

💡 Did you know? A version of „The Card Players“ sold in 2011 for over 250 million dollars: long the most expensive painting sale ever.

Les Grandes Baigneuses

Painted around 1906.

💡 Did you know? The monumental „Bathers,“ with their pyramidally built bodies, paved the way to Cubism.

Mont Sainte-Victoire

Cézanne painted this mountain over sixty times.

💡 Did you know? The mountain near Aix became Cézanne's lifelong motif: a laboratory for his search for the structure of nature.

Mardi Gras

Painted around 1888.

💡 Did you know? Cézanne's own son modelled for the harlequin in this carnival scene.

The Boy in the Red Vest

Painted around 1889.

💡 Did you know? In 2008 a version of this painting was stolen from a Zurich museum and recovered only years later.

The Basket of Apples

Painted around 1893.

💡 Did you know? Table and bottle appear slightly „tilted“: Cézanne shows objects from several viewpoints at once.

Lady in Blue

Painted around 1904.

💡 Did you know? The picture in the Hermitage shows Cézanne's late, almost architectural conception of the human figure.

Girl at the Piano

Painted around 1869.

💡 Did you know? The subtitle refers to Wagner's „Tannhäuser“: Cézanne was an admirer of his music.

Curtain, Jug and Fruit Bowl

Painted around 1893.

💡 Did you know? The richly draped curtain shows Cézanne's delight in colour and folds: this still life too fetched record prices.

Mont Sainte-Victoire seen from Bellevue

Painted around 1892.

💡 Did you know? A railway viaduct in the valley anchors the view in the modern age: nature and technology together.

The House of the Hanged Man

Painted around 1874.

💡 Did you know? With this early work Cézanne took part in the very first Impressionist exhibition of 1874.

House in Provence

Painted around 1885.

💡 Did you know? Cézanne built the bare houses of Provence out of geometric planes of colour.

Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne (1839 to 1906) was a French painter whose search for the structure behind things bridged Impressionism and modern art.

💡 Did you know? Often mocked in his lifetime, Cézanne became the idol of Picasso and Matisse after his death: the „father of modern art.“