The last Cézanne towards the future

The last Cézanne towards the future

Paul Cézanne, of Italian origin, was born in the province of Aix-en-Provence in 1839.

His impetuous character, but indecisive about everything, proved to be immovable on a single topic: art. He came into conflict with his father, who wanted him to be a magistrate, and, with the help of his close friend Emile Zola, he managed to pursue his intent.

In Paris, Pissarro was his mentor, the person who guided and advised him, and introduced him to the pictorial environment that mattered.

Cézanne's character, tumultuous, distrustful and melancholy, certainly did not help him and led him to return often to "his" province.

The only fixed point in so much confusion was painting. Paul was convinced that he had to devote himself to pictorial research to demonstrate his idea with his paintings.

He did not agree with the Impressionists. His interest was not grasping the impression of the moment.

Cézanne wanted to get to the intimate structure of the things that are seen.

Cézanne, in fact, abolishes light, perspective and drawing as they were considered until then. He writes. “… As one paints, one draws. The more harmonious the color becomes, the more precise the design becomes ".

Cézanne draws by combining colors with his unmistakable “comb brushstrokes”. Thus, light and perspective are also rendered with colors: warm colors for things near and cold for things far away.

The subjects are anything but impressionists; he paints landscapes and still lifes instead of Parisian life, parties and dances.

"To paint is not to slavishly copy the objective data, it is to grasp a harmony between multiple relationships and transpose them into their own range, developing them according to a new and original logic."

His style and his research open the doors to Cubism and to all the painting to follow, so much so that Matisse and Picasso declare: “Cézanne is the father of us all”.

Isolated from all the others, like Van Gogh, Cézanne creates his pictorial philosophy with difficulty: depression and bipolarity, of which he was aware, complicate his life.

On 22 October 1906 he died of pneumonia that he had caught, due to a storm that surprised him while he was painting in the countryside.

“I have a slight sensation, but I can't express it. I am like someone unable to use the gold coin in his possession. "

His conditions of thought and character prevented him from recognizing the value of his work which, instead, is here before our eyes today to enlighten us all.

Andrea Giuseppe Fadini