Paul Cezanne was a French Post-Impressionist painter who bridged the gap between the very different styles of nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. His style is perhaps one of the most recognizable and unique of all time, intensely studying his subjects and depicted them with sophisticated use of geometric simplification, optical phenomena, fractured form and a revolutionary perspective behind it. He is considered to have greatly informed the later cubist movement and been highly influential in all modern art that followed. Cezanne was a master of design, color and composition, creating a expressive effect that presents viewers with a wildly complex visual landscape that is at once attractive and complex.
Cezanne was born in Aix-en-Provence, France in the winter of 1839. He grew up in the south of France in a prosperous household that allowed him to pursue his art. It was said that Cezanne inherited his world view and theories on life from his mother, who was fiery, intense and unabashedly romantic. The financial security of his family allowed the young Cezanne to study art from an early age. At approximately ten years old, he began his first formal training in drawing at the Saint Joseph school under a talented Spanish monk, Joseph Gilbert. Upon moving to Paris to pursue his art Cezanne met Camille Pissarro, an impressionist painter who greatly influenced the development of Cezanne's style. During the years that their friendship first took shape, the two often visited the countryside to paint landscapes side by side. Cezanne's fascination with landscapes persisted throughout his life, and he often strove to paint them imaginatively with great attention to composition. Cezanne's evolution as a painter is illustrated quite clearly in his landscape paintings which change from naturalistic to impressionistic to a more architectural style. It is said of Cezanne that he tried to “unite observation of nature with the permanence of classical composition.”
A technique that Cezanne is known for developing is that of optical phenomena. This involves the simplification of organic shapes to more straightforward geometric ones. Cezanne applied this principle in varying degrees in his paintings, as he tried to marry the truth of what he saw with artistic styles that he admired. The principle of optical phenomena is also noted for re-envisioning earlier standards of perspective.
Cezanne's work went through several clearly identified cycles. These include the dark period, the impressionist period, the mature period and the final period. All of these feature certain stylistic elements that Cezanne never abandoned, and share in many of the values of impressionism. Cezanne's most notable works were born out of his mature period, and by the time he reached his final period, he had become wildly popular as an artist. Despite his success, Cezanne withdrew more and more into himself, spending long periods of time in recluse, mostly as a result of a number of personal tragedies. Before his death in 1906 Cezanne was already being hailed as one of the most influential painters of all time. Many of the paintings found in our Abstract Canvas gallery were influenced by Cezanne's most renowned works.
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