The renowned French painter, Paul Cézanne,
was born on January 19, 1839, in the southern French town
of Aix-en-Provence, the son of a wealthy banker. At the age
of 20, he began studying law at the Université d’Aix,
but abandoned these studies in 1861 to take up painting full-time.
He moved to Paris, met Emile Zola, who greatly encouraged
Cézanne in his work. A little later he met Pissaro,
who also had a great influence in the young artist’s
development. Pissaro introduced Cézanne to Manet and
that was how he came into contact with the rest of the group
of artists known as the Impressionists.
From 1862 Cézanne moved continually
between Aix and Paris until 1870, when he settled in L’Estaque,
a village on the coast near Marseille. In his early art, the
technique he used included thick and lively strokes of the
palette knife, from which he created thickly textured and
violently deformed shapes that gave his works a dreamlike
quality. Many pieces of this time were later destroyed by
the artists himself. These early paintings were influenced
in part by other prominent artists such as Courbet,
Delacroix and Zurbarán.
Cézanne later tried “recreating
nature” by simplifying forms and trying to evoke the
basic geometric structure equivalent to whatever subject he
chose to work on. Gradually his style evolved, changing the
perspectives and viewpoints and often leaving parts of the
canvas unpainted, thus breaking with the tradition of completely
finishing a painting. In his later work, Cézanne used
apples, male figures, and landscapes as his subjects.
Cézanne was one of the most important
European painters of the late 19th century and his later works,
evolving closer and closer to abstraction. It was these works
that had a profound influence on modern painters such as Picasso
and Matisse. Thus
Cézanne is correctly considered a precursor of modern
art, and especially of Cubism.
A selection of some of his pieces:
Madame Cézanne
Ambroise Vollard
Mont Sainte-Victoire
The Kitchen Table
The Card Players
Bathers
The Abduction
The Morder
Rocks at L’Estaque
House of the Hanged Man
