Regarded by many as the first truly modern artist, Paul Czanne transformed the face of 19th
century painting and heralded the advent of Cubism.
Born in Aix-en-Provence to a wealthy banking family, Czanne studied law before
surrendering to his passion for art. In 1862 the artist traveled to Paris, enrolling in the Atelier
Suisse where he painted alongside Pissaro, Renoir, Sisley and Degas. Repeatedly rejected by
the Salon (the official exhibition presented annually by the French Academy), Czanne
exhibited three paintings in the first Impressionist show of 1874.
His early work shows the influence of French masters Courbet and Delacroix, but
ultimately Czanne abandoned his early style, along with Impressionism, in favor of an
increasingly abstract interpretation. He believed art should be "a harmony which runs parallel
with nature." Czanne sought to reduce nature to three shapes: the cylinder, cone and sphere,
rendering these shapes in skillfully modeled patches of color.
Czanne spent the last years of his life as a near recluse in Aix, where he painted a
series of works of a long favored subject, Mont Sainte-Victoire. An extensive retrospective of
the artist's work was exhiited in 1996 at the Tate Gallery, London, and the Philadelphia
Museum of Art.
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