He hid both his artistry and his wife from his father, a wealthy hat merchant: Who is Paul Cézanne?
Cézanne was 67 years old when he died on October 22, 1906. On his way to paint landscapes, he was caught in heavy rain and died of pneumonia. He was buried in the Aix-en-Provence cemetery.
Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) was born on January 19, 1839, in Aix-en-Provence, the son of a wealthy hat merchant, Louis-Auguste Cézanne, who later became a banker.
He graduated from the classical school in 1858, where his long-term friendships with Émile Zola began. At school he is more interested in literature and his essays are on poetry. It turns out that even if he had artistic inclinations, his family certainly didn't support it. His conversations with Émile Zola, with whom he had been a close friend since his school years, were among the first factors that sparked his imagination. The region of Provence, where he went on long expeditions with Zola, became the place where the painter became attached throughout his life.
Paul Cézanne (19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work introduced new modes of representation and influenced avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century. Cézanne is said to have formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism.
Following his father's wishes, he studied law from 1859 to early 1861. Having stopped studying law, Cézanne wanted to continue his art life in Paris, but this was not approved by his father. His close friend Émile Zola encouraged him to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. However, he could not enter the Academy. He met impressionist painters such as Manet and Degas, as well as Pissarro, whom he called a man to be consulted, a man like God, who supported him throughout his life and influenced his understanding of art. He returned to work for his father.
Cézanne grew up under the intense pressure of his father. So much so that when he started living in the same house with his lover, Marie-Hortense Fiquet, he kept this relationship a secret for fear that his father would cut his monthly allowance. His father, who learned about this relationship after the birth of his son Paul, reduced his pocket money by half and made his son dependent on his friends. Cézanne would marry Hortense six months after his father's death in 1886.
The years 1872-82 are Cézanne's impressionist period. What distinguishes Cézanne from other impressionists is the importance he gives to the infrastructure and foundation of the painting, rather than the changing light values in the painting. Paul Cézanne, known as a post-impressionist and one of the artists who paved the way for abstract painting, was one of the main figures who seriously influenced the development of Cubism. Picasso was so impressed with Cézanne that he mentions in one of his speeches: “He was my only master! I worked on his paintings for years, he was like our father.”
“To paint from nature is not to copy the object, it is to become aware of our senses,” says Cézanne. Thus, he wants to show that he has a different perception of nature. He tried to analyze nature and space by emphasizing the contrast and tonal relations of colors. With the thesis that everything in nature consists of sphere, cone, and cylinder forms, he thought that nature is a geometric unity. Thus, he believed that objects were separated from each other by differences in light and shadow, not by precise and clear lines.
Cézanne goes several times to his friend Émile Zola's house in Medan, on the Seine, near Paris.
In 1886, Cézanne was offended by the similarity of the protagonist in Émile Zola's book L'œuvre (The Work), which tells the story of a failed painter, and ended his long-standing friendship with Zola.
Cézanne's still lives were limited to a few simple objects that he constantly used. He wanted to portray the apple as he saw it, that is, as an object made up of various color tones. Cézanne, who dealt only with objects in his early days, later became interested in placing this order in a space phenomenon. The table, drawer, chair, and floor in the work create a spatial reference for the still life.
Cézanne was 30 and Hortense 19 when they met. First, she is a model, then she becomes his lover. But Hortense is a headstrong, money-loving, talkative, superficial, and commonplace bourgeois who does not understand Cézanne's art. Apparently, she is the one that Cézanne loved.
Throughout his career, he particularly enjoyed making still lives. The black, brown, and gray colors and sad mood he used in his works helped him make a difference. It is seen that the artist, who prefers a calm and quiet life, used lively and bright colors in his works after meeting Pissarro.
For Cézanne, modulating a color means creating variations between cool and warm, light and dark, or muted and intense. He explained how he achieved depth in his paintings as follows: “Nature is more depth than the surface; The incorporation of blue into the light vibrations represented by reds and yellows is to create the impression of depth.”
“There are two important tools in painting: the eye and the brain. The eye should support each other by looking at nature, and the brain by the organized logic of the senses; They should be vehicles for expression, guiding each other in harmony.” Cézanne's handling of a painting by reducing it to geometric units sowed the seeds of cubism. Starting from the fact that we look at the world with two eyes, Cézanne realized the depth created by seeing from two different angles and used two different angles in his paintings. Cubist painters such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris took this approach even further and fused many different angles into the same painting.
Cézanne has recurred over and over again the themes of his childhood. The quarries that Zola walked with, the ones bathing in the streams, and the mountain of Sainte-Victoire, the summit of the low mountain range nearby. Some houses in Mount Sainte-Victorie and the Black Castle are cube-shaped; trees are cylindrical; The mountain itself, on the other hand, consists of planes placed on top of each other in a way that gives the impression of mass, body, and volume.
“When I have to pass judgment on art, I take my picture and put it next to a tree or a flower, an object created by God. Cézanne, who said, "If there is no harmony, there is no art," Cézanne did not receive the attention he deserved while living with his unique artistic method, which he developed throughout his career and which he did not fully embody in any of his works. Cézanne was 67 years old when he died on October 22, 1906. On his way to paint landscapes, he was caught in heavy rain and died of pneumonia. He was buried in the Aix-en-Provence cemetery.