Paul Cezanne - Midterm Essay

Paul Cezanne was a French painter that was known to many as the “Father to modern art”. The term, modern art includes “artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation” (1). It is even known that, “Both Matisse and Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne is the father of us all “ (2). Cezanne was born January 19^th 1839 and died October 22^nd 1906. He was known for his brush strokes, use of color, and distortion to create his masterpieces. Many of his famous paintings include, The Card Players (1894 – 1895), The Large Bathers (1898 - 1905), and The Boy in the Red Vest (1889). These paintings all have characteristics that are abnormal to the time period of painting. In the painting The Card Players, the men’s arms are elongated, their knees are shortened, and the table is not the normal square shape but shortened and slightly tilted. Another Example is the painting, The Boy in the Red Vest. The boy’s face seems as it is taken from two different perspectives while the ear is enlarged and the boys left arm is elongated from the shoulder to elbow. Cezanne was taking different perspectives and angles of his subjects and incorporating them all into one. This was something totally new for the time period which strayed away from the previous form of painting known as Impressionism, which was a practice to capture natural objects within natural lighting. Cezanne’s use of color and brush stroke can be seen beautifully in the painting The Large Bathers. Here Cezanne uses large strokes in the sky and incorporates reds, yellows, blues, and greens on the women’s bodies that wouldn’t normally be there. Cezanne’s techniques showed that he wanted to further explore the individual shape and depth of objects by rendering them from their natural forms. In doing so Cezanne broke the barriers of impressionism and paved a pathway to the new realm for many known as modern art.
Citations:
1.       "Modern Art." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Mar. 2017. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.
2.      "Paul Cézanne." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Mar. 2017. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.