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Paul Cézanne

Geburtstag: 19. Januar 1839
Todesdatum: 22. Oktober 1906

Paul Cézanne war ein französischer Maler. Cézannes Werk wird unterschiedlichen Stilrichtungen zugeordnet: Während seine frühen Arbeiten noch von Romantik – wie die Wandbilder im Landhaus Jas de Bouffan – und Realismus geprägt sind, gelangte er durch intensive Auseinandersetzung mit impressionistischen Ausdrucksformen zu einer neuen Bildsprache, die den zerfließenden Bildeindruck impressionistischer Werke zu festigen versucht. Er gab die illusionistische Fernwirkung auf, brach die von den Vertretern der Akademischen Kunst aufgestellten Regeln und strebte eine Erneuerung klassischer Gestaltungsmethoden auf der Grundlage des impressionistischen Farbraumes und farbmodulatorischer Prinzipien an.

Seine Malerei rief in der zeitgenössischen Kunstkritik Unverständnis und Spott hervor. Bis in die späten 1890er Jahre waren es hauptsächlich Künstlerkollegen wie Pissarro, Monet und Renoir sowie Kunstsammler und der Galerist Ambroise Vollard, denen sich Cézannes Schaffen erschloss und die zu den ersten Käufern seiner Gemälde zählten. Vollard eröffnete im Jahr 1895 in seiner Pariser Galerie die erste Einzelausstellung, die zu einer breiteren Auseinandersetzung mit dem Werk des Künstlers führte.Aus der Vielzahl der nach Cézannes Tod sich an dessen Werk orientierenden Künstler sind im Besonderen Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque und André Derain zu nennen. Die gegensätzliche Ausrichtung der malerischen Werke der genannten Künstler lässt die Komplexität des Cézanne’schen Werks erkennen. Cézanne zählt mit seinen Werken aus kunsthistorischer Sicht zu den Wegbereitern der Klassischen Moderne.

Cézannes Bildthemen waren oft Badende, die Landschaft um das Gebirge Montagne Sainte-Victoire, Stillleben und Porträts seines Modells, seiner Geliebten und späteren Frau, Hortense Fiquet.

Zitate Paul Cézanne

„Alas, because I'm no longer innocent. We're civilized beings. Whether we like it or not, we have the cares and concerns of classical civilization in our bones. I want to express myself clearly when I paint. In people who feign ignorance there is a kind of barbarism even more detestable than the academic kind: it's no longer possible to be ignorant today. One no longer is. We come into the world armed with facility. Facility is the death of art and we must rid ourselves of it.“

— Paul Cézanne
p. 155, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif': Cited in: George Pattison. God and Being: An Enquiry, (2011). p. 64

„That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist.“

— Paul Cézanne
p. 164, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif' Camille Pissarro was Cézanne's 'teacher' in impressionistic landscape painting; they frequently painted together in open air.

„The point to be made clear is that, whatever may be our temperament, or our power in the presence of nature, we have to render what we actually see, forgetting everything that appeared before our own time. Which, I think, should enable the artist to express his personality to the full, be it large or small. Now that I am an old man, about seventy, the sensations of colour which produce light give rise to abstractions that prevent me from covering my canvas, and from trying to define the outlines of objects when their points of contact are tenuous and delicate; with the result that my image or picture is incomplete. For another thing, the planes become confused, superimposed; hence Neo-Impressionism (initiated by Seurat and Paul Signac, ed., where everything is outlined in black, an error which must be uncompromisingly rejected. And nature, if consulted, shows us how to achieve this aim.“

— Paul Cézanne
Quote from Cézanne's letter to Émile Bernard, 23 October 1905; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 180

„It's like Impressionism. They all do it at the Salons. Oh, very discreetly! I too was an Impressionist. I don't conceal the fact. Pissarro had an enormous influence on me. But I wanted to make out of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art of the museums.“

— Paul Cézanne
p. 164, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

„Anyone who wants to paint should read Bacon. He defined the artists as homo additus naturae... Bacon had the right idea, but listen Monsieur Vollard, speaking of nature, the English philosopher, [Bacon] didn't for-see our open-air school, nor that other calamity which has followed close upon its heels: open-air indoors.“

— Paul Cézanne
Quote in a conversation with Vollard in museum The Luxembourg, Paris 1897 - standing before the 'Olympia' of Manet; as quoted in Cézanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 36

„Don't you think your Corot [to Guilemet the painter] is a little short on temperament? I'm painting a portrait of Vallabreque; the highlight on the nose is pure vermilion [remark of Cezanne ca. 1860]“

— Paul Cézanne
Quote in: Cézanne, by , Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 28

„Make others feel the same way about it. Without their realizing it! That's the meaning of art... Yes, what I'm aiming for is the logical development of what we see and feel when we observe nature; only then I'm concerned with the process, processes being for us no more than simple ways of getting the public to feel what we ourselves are feeling, and of making our point. The great artists we admire have done no more... Shall we have lunch?“

— Paul Cézanne
p. 160, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif

„Allow me to repeat what I said when you were here: deal with nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone, all placed in perspective, so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth, a section of nature, or if you prefer, of the spectacle spread before our eyes by the 'Pater Omnipotens Aeterne Deus'. Lines perpendicular to that horizon give depth. But for us men, nature has more depth than surface, hence the need to introduce in our vibrations of light, represented by reds and yellows, enough blue tints to give a feeling of air.“

— Paul Cézanne
Quote from Cézanne's letter to Émile Bernard, 15 April 1904; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 180

„Colour, if I may say so, is biological. Colour is alive and colour alone makes things come alive... Without losing any part of myself, I need to get back to that instinct, so that these colours in the scattered fields signify an idea to me, just as to them they signify a crop. Confronted by a yellow, they spontaneously feel the harvesting activity required of them, just as I, when faced with the same ripening tint..“

— Paul Cézanne
p. 162, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

„I was very pleased with myself when I discovered that sunlight could not be reproduced; it had to be represented by something else.... by colour.“

— Paul Cézanne
Quote from Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca; Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 79

„I still work with difficulty, but I seem to get along. That is the important thing to me. Sensations form the foundation of my work, and they are imperishable, I think. Moreover, I am getting rid of that devil who, as you know, used to stand behind me and forced me at will to 'imitate'; he's not even dangerous any more. [one week later Cezanne died]“

— Paul Cézanne
Quote in Cezanne's last letter to his son Paul, Aix, 15 October 1906; as quoted in Cézanne, Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 112

„Everything we look at disperses and vanishes. doesn't it? Nature is always the same, and yet its appearance is always changing... Painting must give us the flavour of nature’s eternity. Everything, you understand. So I join together nature's straying hands.... From all sides, here there and everywhere, I select colours, tones and shades; I set them down, I bring them together.... They make lines, they become objects – rocks, trees – without my thinking about them.... But if there is the slightest distraction, the slightest hitch, above all if I interpret too much one day, if I'm carried away today by a theory which contradicts yesterday's, if I think while I'm painting, if I meddle, then woosh!, everything goes to pieces.“

— Paul Cézanne
p. 148, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

„Painting certainly means more to me than everything else in the world. I think my mind becomes clearer when I am in the presence of nature. Unfortunately, the realization of my sensations is always a very painful process with me. I can't seem to express the intensity which beats in upon my senses. I haven't at my command the magnificent richness of color which enlivens Nature... Look at that cloud; I should like to be able to paint that! Monet could. He had muscle.“

— Paul Cézanne
Quote in a conversation with Vollard, along the river near Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74