While
studying at the Académie Suisse, Cezanne met Camille
Pissarro who was to influence him
greatly. When he failed the entrance examinations for the Beaux-Arts,
however, he returned to Aix. After working for a year in his father's
bank and painting only in his spare time, he returned to Paris (1862-64).
Zola introduced him to Edouard Manet, Pierre
Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille and Edgar
Degas, and Cezanne worked fairly
loosely with these artists. Between 1864 and 1890 Cezanne lived in
Paris, its environs and in the region around Aix until diabetes forced
him to retire permanently to Aix.
Early in his career, Cezanne admired Caravaggio, Courbet, and Delacroix,
and his paintings until 1868 were romantic or baroque in style, dark
in color, and classical in subject. During the period 1868-72 Manet's
influence may be noted in added clarity and solidity of form. During
his Impressionist period (1872-79) his palette lightened and, following
Pissarro's example, he approached nature with greater simplicity.
Throughout the years that he exhibited with the Impressionists Cézanne
held the unhappy distinction of being the most derided member of the
group. He liked his own work no better than the critics and public
did, however, but in 1880 he began to develop his own theory of painting
and his own style. It is a style characterized by unemotional, non-narrative,
closed compositions that are based on the reduction of every object
in nature to the cone, the cylinder, or the cube - those permanent
qualities, which he believed were beneath all accidental external
variations. He achieved a three-dimensional architectural effect by
deliberately alternating warm and cool tones, by using a dark outline
around objects and forms, and by an intensely dynamic balancing of
shapes. None of Cézanne's works are the result of accident. He painted
and repainted, altered brushstrokes attacked his subjects from different
angles, and deliberately falsified perspective to achieve a timeless
landscape, an orderly intelligence, and a solidity of form.
All modern art can be said to stem, either
directly or indirectly, from Cézanne: Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism,
Expressionism, and Abstract Expressionism. He immediately affected
the work of Paul Gauguin,
Vincent van Gogh, Pablo
Picasso, and George Braque who, in
turn, have influenced countless others. Cézanne finally began to receive
some public recognition in 1895 and for the remaining eleven years
of his life he enjoyed both public and private attention. He continued
to paint until six days before he died of pneumonia on October 22,
1906.
|
Featured
Paintings
