1839 -1906 · Aix-en-Provence, Paris and birth of modern art

Constructive touch, colorful volumes and unstable perception make Paul Cézanne the painter who transforms printing into sustainable architecture.

Paul Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839 and died there in 1906. After studying law undertaken at the request of his father, he chose painting and joined Paris in 1861. Refused several times at the Salon, he worked in a dark and passionate material before Camille Pissarro encouraged him, in the 1870s, to paint on the motif with a lighter palette. Cézanne exhibited with the Impressionists but pursued a different ambition: to give fleeting sensations the solidity of museum art. His parallel touch constructed shapes in relation to color rather than closed outline. Card Players, produced in several versions around 1890 -1892, transform workers from Jas de Bouffan into silent figures, stable like an ancient relief. The Basket of Apples tilts the table, multiplies the points of view and makes each fruit a living volume. The Montagne Sainte-Victoire seen from Lauves belongs to a series of around one hundred paintings and drawings devoted to the Provençal motif; the mountain becomes an architecture of blue, ocher and green. The Grandes Baigneuses bring together landscape, body and classical tradition in a long-meditated composition. Cézanne thus opens the way to cubism, body and classical tradition in a long-meditated composition. Cézanne thus opens the way to cubism, body and classical tradition in a long-meditated composition. Cézanne thus opens the way to cubism, body and classical tradition in a long-meditated composition. Cézanne thus opens the way to cubism, body and classical tradition in a long-meditated composition. Cézanne thus opens the way to cubism, body and classical tradition in a long-meditated composition. Cézanne thus opens the way to cubism, body and classical tradition in a long-meditated composition. Cézanne thus opens the way to cubism, body and classical tradition in Sainte-Victoire Mountain seen from Les Lauves. Its reading favors movement.

Cézanne does not copy the world: he reconstructs it touch after touch, until the color has the weight of an apple and the duration of a mountain.