Cezanne

📙 Cezanne is perhaps the most enigmatic artist of the nineteenth century. His life was tempestuous; he was torn by inner contradictions. And yet not only was his art balanced and sure, but his influence upon modern art is unequalled. At one level Cezanne was a classicist, concerned with order and form; a bourgeois, who craved public honors and went to mass every day. At another level he was a romantic, enamored of passionate colors; a man separated from the everyday world by his genius and his anxiety. He had little formal training in art. Although he allied himself with the Impressionists for awhile and learned from them, no doubt, he was driven to discover an entirely new artistic perspective. He spent most of his life in isolation suspicious of those closest to him, doubtful as to the worth of what he was doing, and yet wholly committed to painting. His constant meditation on the relation of art to nature gave birth to a new way of considering art. The painter was to take his form from nature, learn from it, but the work of art existed in and of itself. Painting no longer attempted to mirror nature; color and tone were directed towards an autonomous artistic reality. Braque and Leger were to say later, "We all start from Cezanne." Cezanne was a pioneer and in a very real sense the father of modern art.