Paul Cézanne
French painter
Died when: 67 years 276 days (813 months)Star Sign: Capricorn
Paul Cézanne (/se?'zæn/ say-ZAN, also UK: /s?'zæn/ s?-ZAN, US: /se?'z??n/ say-ZAHN;French: [p?l sezan]; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 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, he arrived at a new pictorial language through intensive examination of Impressionist forms of expression.
He gave up the use of perspective and broke with the established rules of Academic Art and strived for a renewal of traditional design methods on the basis of the impressionistic color space and color 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 Matisse and 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 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.
