Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne is a French Post-Impressionist painter, foundational figure of modern art whose revolutionary work establishes the bridge between 19th-century Impressionism and 20th-century Cubism. Native of Aix-en-Provence, he develops an analytical approach to painting based on the geometrization of natural forms and the construction of space through color, tirelessly seeking to capture the deep and permanent structure of the visible world beyond fleeting appearances. His still lifes with apples, his portraits of Mont Sainte-Victoire, and his bathers testify to an obsessive search for the essence of things through a constructive and modulated brushstroke that simultaneously fragments and reconstructs reality. Long misunderstood and working in Provençal isolation, he profoundly influences subsequent generations - Picasso calling him the father of us all - and revolutionizes the very conception of pictorial representation by asserting the autonomy of the painting as plastic construction independent of servile imitation of nature.