About the Draft Article Inspiration Artists Trends in Painting FAQ (help) Contacts
Add information
Contemporary artists
Paintings in the interior Modular paintings Photo wallpapers Interior self adhesive
Paul Cezanne: the life and work of the artist
Paul Cézanne (fr. Paul Cézanne; 1839-1906) was a French painter, a bright representative of post impressionism.
CONTENT
Biography of the artist
Creation
Interesting facts from the artist's life
Paintings by Paul Cezanne
The artist's statements about art
Bibliography
BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST
Paul Cezanne was born on January 19, 1839 in the ancient French town of Aix en Provence.
The only son of a rude and greedy father, Paul, had practically no relation to painting as a child, but he received a very good education in other areas.
His studies were easy and effective for him.
He constantly received school awards in Latin and Greek, in mathematics.
Drawing and painting were included in the course of mandatory disciplines, but in his younger years, Paul did not win any special laurels in this field.
It is noteworthy that the annual prize for drawing in college went to a classmate of the young Cezanne – the future classic Emile Zola.
It is worth noting that two outstanding Frenchmen managed to carry a strong childhood friendship through their entire lives.
And the choice of a life path was almost completely determined by Emil's friendly advice.
In 1858, Cezanne passed the bachelor's exams at the University of Aix, having entered the law school operating at the university.
Completely devoid of interest in law, young Paul was forced to do this at the insistence of his domineering parent.
For two years he "suffered" in this school, and during this time he firmly formed a decision to devote himself to painting.
The son and the father managed to reach a compromise – Louis Auguste equipped his son with a workshop where, in between law practice, he could devote time to studying artistic skills under the guidance of a local artist, Joseph Gibert.
In 1861, his father still let his son go to Paris for real painting training.
Visiting the Atelier Suisse, the impressionable Paul Cezanne, under the influence of local artists, quickly moved away from the academic manner and began to search for his own style.
After returning briefly to Aix, Paul then followed his friend Zola back to the capital.
He is trying to enter the Ecole de Bozard, but the examiners considered the papers presented by him as too "violent", which, however, was not so far from reality.
However, 23 years is an age full of hope, and Cezanne, not too upset, continued to write.
Every year he presented his creations in the Salon.
But the demanding jury rejected all the artist's paintings.
The injured pride forced Cezanne to plunge deeper into the work, gradually developing his own manner.
Some recognition, along with other Impressionists, came to Cezanne in the mid 70s.
Several rich bourgeois acquired several of his works.
Portrait of the artists son
Self portrait 1864
Madame Cezanne in the Greenhouse
In 1869, Maria Hortense Fike became Paul's wife.
They lived together for forty years.
Cezanne, his wife and son Paul constantly moved from place to place, until finally, in 1885, Ambroise Vollard organized a personal exhibition of the artist.
But the debts associated with the death of his mother force the artist to sell the family estate.
At the turn of the century, he opened his own studio, continuing to work tirelessly at the same time, until on October 22, 1906, pneumonia interrupted his difficult and fruitful life path.
Having become close to Camille Pissarro, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet at an early age, Cezanne participated in Impressionist exhibitions in 1874 and 1877, but already during this period his own painting system was being formed.
Fundamentally diverging from this time with the method of impressionism, Paul Cezanne was interested not in the dynamics of the light air environment and the variability of color in the atmosphere, but in the stable patterns of color combinations and forms, the materiality of the objective and natural worlds (“The Hanged Man's House in Auvers”, 1872-1873, Musee d'Orsay, Paris).
Persistently comprehending these laws, Cezanne spent a long time developing the same motif in search of the structural constructiveness of natural forms (numerous images of Mount Saint Victoire, including in the Kortold Institute, London, 1887; in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, around 1900; and in other collections).
Mount Saint Victoire 1882-1885
View of the Saint Victoire mountain from the Bibemu quarry.
one thousand eight hundred ninety seven
View of the Saint Victoire Mountain.
1904-1906
Mount Saint Victoire 1897-1898
Mount Saint Victoire 1885-1895
Operating mainly with gradations of the three main colors (green, blue and yellow), then thin and transparent, then sharply contrasting, applied with dense body strokes, he indicated with their help spatial plans and the degree of illumination.
The material weight of the colorful texture is harmoniously combined in Cezanne's works with a bold laconic drawing, a structurally clear, plastically generalized modeling of the form and a clear balance of the composition ("Self Portrait", 1879-1885," Pierrot and Harlequin", 1888," Peaches and Pears", 1895, all in the State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow).
In landscapes with their wide, panoramic coverage of the landscape filled with light, Cezanne achieves a majestic epic ("The Banks of the Marne”, 1888, the State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow).
In still lifes, emphasizing the structure of the object, as if weighing it down with the help of a colorful texture and the use of pure color, the artist reveals the material materiality and strict plasticity of the object world ("Pot with geraniums and fruits“, 1890-1894, the Metropolitan Museum of Art;” Still Life with drapery", 1898-1899, the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg).
The work of Cezanne, one of the main masters of post Impressionism, who sought to create a kind of classical art, devoid of everything transitory and fleeting, to reveal the unchanging greatness and harmonious balance of nature, the organic unity of its forms, had a huge impact on many artists of the twentieth century, as well as on entire areas of fine art, which, as a rule, developed certain aspects of Cezanne's heritage (Cubism, Luchism, so called simultaneous painting, etc.).
In his work, the artist tried at the cost of titanic efforts to reconcile the classics and modernity, Poussin and nature, the laws of grand style and the right to individual choice.
Of course, in the era of the triumph of individual choice, no style could no longer be a model for artists, each of whom now chose his own path in art freely, obeying only the inner properties of his soul, and not the requirements of the artistic community.
Therefore, the task that Cezanne set for himself was in principle impossible, which predetermined the artist's constant doubts.
It is impossible to assert both freedom and canons at the same time.
But the specific artistic results that Cezanne achieved in his work were so impressive that they aroused respect among representatives of various trends in painting.
Forest
Houses Along a Road
In the Woods
Cezanne's painting in a certain sense became a revival in the art of the ancient Pythagorean traditions, although Cezanne, of course, only felt the coincidence of his final views with this tradition, and did not consciously follow Pythagoreanism.
Here we can rather say that Pythagoreanism, in turn, only expressed certain insights that are characteristic of people of different historical epochs, regardless of whether these people know the views of the Pythagoreans or not.
This means that Cezanne first came to his beliefs independently, and only then realized what tradition they are related to.
Cezanne eventually became the founder of the painting of forms in European art, one of the directions of which, shortly after Cezanne, was Cubism.
But Cubism, even in the person of Picasso, turned out to be poorer in its content of Cezanne's painting, because it lost those purely pictorial qualities, richness of color, multi layered writing, which Cezanne achieved as a result of hard work.
In addition, Cubism for Picasso was only a stage, a conscious experiment, an artistic game, and not a search for the foundations of being, so the internal content of Picasso's works of the Cubist era is much poorer than the content of Cezanne's best works.
Over time, when Cezanne became interested in watercolors, he transferred some techniques of watercolor painting to oil painting: he began to paint on white, specially unpainted canvases.
As a result, the paint layer on these canvases has become more lightweight, as if highlighting from the inside.
Cezanne began to limit himself to three colors: green, blue and ochre, mixed, of course, with the white color of the canvas itself.
This approach to the choice of colors was necessary for Cezanne in order to achieve the most meaningful artistic result with a minimum of funds.
During this period, the modeling of forms on canvas, as well as their generalization, becomes more concise.
INTERESTING FACTS FROM THE ARTIST'S LIFE
Cezanne's artistic heritage consists of more than 800 oil paintings, not counting watercolors and other works.
No one can count the number of works destroyed as imperfect by the artist himself over the years of his long creative path.
In the Paris Autumn Salon of 1904, an entire hall was set aside for the demonstration of Cezanne's paintings.
This exhibition was the first real success, moreover, the triumph of the artist.
Cezanne's works bear the imprint of the artist's inner life.
They are filled with the internal energy of attraction and repulsion.
Contradictions were originally inherent in both the artist's mental world and his artistic aspirations.
The southern temperament was combined in Cezanne's everyday life with seclusion and asceticism, piety - with attempts to free himself from the religious traditions that bound the temperament.
Confident in his genius, Cezanne was nevertheless forever obsessed with the fear that he would not find the exact means of expressing what he saw and wanted to express in the picture by means of painting.
He was always talking about the inability to" realize " his own vision, he always doubted that he could do it, and each new picture became both a refutation and a confirmation of this.
Cezanne obviously had many fears and phobias, and his unstable character found refuge and salvation in the work of a painter.
Perhaps this circumstance was the main reason for Cezanne's fanatical work on his paintings.
Suspicious and unsociable, Cezanne became a whole and strong person in his work.
Creativity cured him the more strongly from his own insurmountable spiritual contradictions, the more intense and constant it was.
THE ARTIST'S STATEMENTS ABOUT ART
"Artists should devote themselves completely to the study of nature and try to create paintings that would be an instruction.
Talking about art is almost useless.
The work that helps a person to achieve success in his business is a sufficient compensation for the misunderstanding shown by fools.
The writer expresses himself in abstractions, while the artist concretizes his feelings and perceptions through drawing and color.
The artist should not be too scrupulous, or too sincere, or too dependent on nature; the artist is more or less the master of his model, and mainly of his means of expression."
"My age and my health will not allow me to fulfill the dream that I have been striving for all my life.
But I will always be grateful to those intelligent art lovers who, despite my hesitation, understood what I was trying to achieve in order to update my art.
I believe that you do not replace the past with your art, but only add a new link to it."
"We need to go in the direction of the classics, but through nature, that is, through feeling."
"My method is to hate a fantastic image.
I write only the truth."
"Color is the point where our brain comes into contact with the universe."
"I want to hit Paris with a carrot and an apple."
"To work without looking back at anyone and gain strength – this is the goal of the artist.
And I donot care about anything else!".
"When you make even a little progress in your work, this is a sufficient reward for not being understood by fools."
Translation option: "Work, thanks to which you make progress in your craft, is a sufficient reward for the fact that you are not understood by fools."
Another version of the translation: "The work of an artist, by which he achieves perfection in his work, is a sufficient reward for the fact that fools do not understand him."
"The approval of others is an aphrodisiac, sometimes it should be avoided.
The consciousness of your power makes you modest."
"I have achieved some success.
Why is it so late and why with such difficulty?
Is art really a priesthood that requires pure souls who have given themselves completely to it?"
"I have nothing to hide in art.
Only the original strength, that is, the temperament, can lead a person to the goal that he must achieve."
"It seems to me that I am moving forward every day, although very slowly."
"Even with a small temperament, you can be a real painter, and you can write well without being a special colorist and not very subtly understanding harmony.
It is enough to have an artistic sense, and this feeling is a scarecrow for all the bourgeois.
Institutes, Scholarships, distinctions, are invented only for fools, buffoons and scoundrels.
Drop the criticism, take up painting.
Salvation is in her."
There are no lines, no shapes, there are only contrasts.
These contrasts are generated not by black and white, but by the color sensation.
The shape is created by the exact ratio of tones.
When the tones are compared harmoniously and without omissions, the picture is created by itself.
The coloristic effect is the main thing in the picture, it makes the picture a single whole, organizes it; this effect should be based on one dominant color spot.
Drawing and color are inseparable; n as you write, you draw, and the more harmonious the color becomes, the more accurate the drawing becomes.
When the color reaches its greatest richness, the form becomes complete.
Contrasts and tone ratios are the whole secret of drawing and modeling.
"The painting is here, inside," he said, hitting his forehead.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Yavorskaya N. V. Cezanne — - M., 1936 Perrusho A. Cezanne.
Per.
with French.
- M., 1966 Comp.
Yavorskaya N. V. Paul Cezanne: Correspondence.
Memoirs of contemporaries.
- M., 1972 Comp.
Barskaya A. L. Paul Cezanne: Album.
- 1975 Lindsay J. Paul Cezanne.
Translated from English = J. Lindsay.
Cezanne: His Life and Art — - L.: Evelyn, Adams and Mackay, 1969.
- Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1989 Venturi L. V. 1-2 / / Cezanne, son art, son oeuvre.
— Paris, 1936 Rewald J.
The ordeal of Paul Cezanne.
— London, 1950 Novotny F. Cezanne und das Ende wissenschftlicher Perspektive.
— Wien, 1938 Badt K. Die Kunst Cezannes.
- Munchen, 1956 Murina Elena.
Cezanne.
- M.: Art XXI century, 2014
When writing this article, materials from such sites were used: ru.wikipedia.org, muzei mira.com, smallbay.ru
If you find any inaccuracies or would like to add to this article, please send us the information by e mail admin@allpainters.ru we and our readers will be very grateful to you.
Paul Cezanne: the artist's paintings
Madame Cezanne Leaning on a Table — Paul Cezanne
Bathers — Paul Cezanne
Portrait of Emile Zola — Paul Cezanne
Olympia — Paul Cezanne
Jacket on a Chair — Paul Cezanne
Reclining Nude — Paul Cezanne
Paul Cezanne - all paintings
Creation.
Freedom.
Painting.
Allpainters.ru created by people who are sincerely passionate about the world of creativity.
Join us!
Vote
It is interesting
Interesting events in the world of painting
Contemporary Art 6 230 Ilya Kabakov: the founding father of Moscow conceptualism
Contemporary Art 3,975 Michael Wilkinson and plexiglass Sculptures
This is interesting 5,072 Most expensive works of art
We are vkontakte
Join us on Vkontakte
We are on facebook
Join us on Facebook
© Allpainters.ru, 2010-2017
A website dedicated to fine art and painting.
Reprint of materials only after placing a direct backlink.
Read the rules of the site.
Follow us: fb vk G+ twitter RSS
About the Draft Article Inspiration Artists Trends in Painting FAQ (help) Contacts
