Cezanne and Paris 2012

2012-02-14

Location: Musee du Luxembourg

When: Through February 26th, 2012

19, rue de Vaugirard

75006 Paris

Tél. 0033(0)1-40 13 62 00

Picasso called Cézanne “the father of us all” since he was clearly the forerunner of all great modern artists. But here comes another, unexpected Cézanne: the Musée de Luxembourg is showing “Cézanne and Paris”.

The rugged yet delicate impressionist landscapes of Paul Cézanne, best known for his depictions of Aix and the South of France, have long captured imaginations. For lovers of Paris, a major show at the recently re-opened Musée du Luxembourg exploring the artist's love affair with the city of light promises to be an illuminating experience. Known for his Provence landscapes, Cézanne was also a Parisian during his age. Discover the richness of the connections between the painter and the city.

Although Cézanne (1839-1906) is usually associated with Provence, he cannot be confined to the south of France. He spent more than half of his time as a painter in Paris and its environs. He travelled between Aix en Provence and Paris over twenty times, although, of course, not for the same reasons when he was twenty as when he was sixty. When he was already an elderly man and still racked with doubts (“I am making slow progress,” he wrote at the end of his life) he painted in secluded spots on the banks of the Marne or near Fontainebleau, or made portraits of an art dealer or a critic and often his wife. He was no longer the young man eager to “conquer” Paris, wanting to be admitted to the fine art school and show his works in the Salon. In Paris, he came up against both tradition and modernity. He worked out “formulas” that he later used in Provence. He shuttled back and forth between Provence and the Ile de France although the rhythm of his journeys changed. After 1890, critics, art dealers, and collectors started to take an interest in his work. Cézanne longed for recognition which could only come from Paris. More than any other artist, he left his stamp on modern art: avant-garde artists from the postimpressionists to Kandinsky looked on him as a forerunner, “the father of us all” as Picasso said.

Everyone knows Cezanne's attraction for the south of France, his home region. His representations of the Sainte-Victoire Mountain in Aix-en- Provence, have particularly gone round the world. However, even though he led more than half of his life as a painter in Paris or its region, only few exhibitions have been devoted to this aspect.

The Musée du Luxembourg invites you to explore the relationship between Cézanne and the French capital through the presentation of some eighty works of the great painter. Go back through time, from 1861, the date when Cézanne came to Paris to become an artist until his final return to Provence. The exhibition focuses on his training years, his friendship with the writer Zola, his work on landscapes and then on the nude portraits, his stays in Auvers-sur-Oise, on the banks of the river Marne or in Fontainebleau... A fabulous journey for a walk around the Paris of another era, and in the most bucolic places the Paris of its outskirts.