Cézanne

Neglected and ridiculed most of his lifetime, Paul Cézanne is now regarded as probably the greatest - and certainly the most influential - painter of the last 100 years. Since his death in 1906, scarcely any major artist has been unaffected by some aspect of his work, and almost every important modern movement stems ultimately from him.

The son of a rich Provençal, he was able to devote himself entirely to art from his early twenties onwards - embarking on a lifetime struggle to express, as fully as possible, the underlying reality of the visible world. After the violent Romanticism of his first phase he became associated with the Impressionists in the 1870s, Pissarro's liberating influence showing him that the key to his development lay in close contact with nature. And yet, despite his avowed intention of making something solid and durable of Impressionism, Cézanne created something totally different - a synthesis of reality and abstraction, a geometrically analysed world of forms which is nevertheless rooted in the world of mature. 

His life's work was crowned in the great landscapes, still lites and portraits which he painted during the last twenty years of his career. These masterpieces were the foundation of the art of our time. 

In this biographical and critical study, Frank Elgar relates the successive stages by which Cézanne gradually achieved his final mastery. 

His analyses of individual works are of the greatest interest and freshness, and he includes a valuable chapter on Cézanne's drawings and watercolours.

"-a truly critical and thoughtful analysis'. Arts Review

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frank Elgar has been the Director of the association 'Les Amis de l'Art'since 1952 and he is still art critic for the periodicals Carrefour and Le Parisien Libéré. His first publication was Cinq Peintres (1942) and he subsequently produced volumes on Ingres, Gauguin, Matisse, Miró and Picasso. He is the author of Mondrian in 'The World of Art Library', A Century of Modern Painting, and with Robert Maillard Picasso, all published by Thames and Hudson.