Paul Cezanne
Paul Cezanne
Paul Cézannewas 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'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...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth19 January 1839
CityAix-en-Provence, France
CountryFrance
The painter unfolds that which has not been seen.
Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.
I am a pupil of Pissarro.
Perhaps I was born too early. I was more the painter of your generation than of mine.
I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed... I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin...
The contour eludes me.
I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration.
I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature.
Time and reflection... modify, little by little, our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us.
Personally I would like to have pupils, a studio, pass on my love to them, work with them, without teaching them anything.. ..A convent, a monastery, a phalanstery of painting where one could train together.. ..but no programme, no instruction in painting.. ..drawing is still alright, it doesn't count, but painting - the way to learn is to look at the masters, above all at nature, and to watch other people painting..
See nature in terms of the cone, the cylinder, and the sphere.
All the theories mess you up inside.
In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her.
Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator.