Discover the Unseen: Top 9 Fun Facts About Paul Cézanne, the Master of Parisian Art
1. Zola and Cézanne's Creative Bromance
Like a 19th-century "Freaky Friday" that lasts a lifetime, Émile Zola and Paul Cézanne swapped dreams, walked through fields, and got artsy in the charming town of Aix-en-Provence: With Zola turning words into literary magic and Cézanne painting his way into the history books, their schoolyard friendship blossomed into a lifelong bond fueled by creativity and a mutual love for the finer things in life.
Source => returnofanative.com
2. High Rollers: Record-Breaking Card Players Painting
In the cutthroat world of card playing, where poker faces and royal flushes reign supreme, one might be surprised to find an artistic masterpiece lurking in the shadows: Voilà, Paul Cezanne's "The Card Players," a series of paintings so impressive that one version fetched about $250 million in 2011, a jaw-dropping amount only outdone by Paul Gauguin's "Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?)" which snagged a staggering $300 million from some museum-savvy Qataris.
Source => museu.ms
Did you know that famous French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir started his artistic journey as a porcelain painter's assistant? Discover how his talent for copying intricate floral designs led him to become a renowned artist! 🎨✨
=> Fun Facts about Pierre-Auguste-Renoir
3. Cézanne: Rise of The Mad Hatter Painter
Paul Cézanne - the father of post-impressionism, or, as he was fondly known at the time, "The Mad Hatter Painter who didn't get a ticket to the Salon Party": Despite facing rejection from the École des Beaux-Arts and Salon exhibitions due to his bold brushstrokes and somber palettes, Cézanne persevered and created iconic masterpieces, including his famous Mont Sainte-Victoire series, cementing his legacy as a renowned 19th-century artist.
Source => artnews.com
4. Cézanne's Secret Studio: Hidden Masterpieces
Paul Cézanne, the original artsy introvert desperate to convince his mom not to hang his paintings on the fridge: he was notoriously private about his work, often painting in secret and withholding even his closest friends and family from viewing his creations, allowing him to develop a unique style that would later inspire renowned artists like Picasso and Matisse.
Source => pablopicasso.org
5. Cézanne's Rebellious Phase and Palette Knife Drama
Before he became the father of modern art, Paul Cézanne was more like the angsty teenage rebel smearing makeup on his bedroom walls: He slathered paint heavily with a palette knife, creating morbid and often scandalous scenes that made critiques wonder if he was a "madman who paints in delirium tremens". Enter Camille Pissarro, the Bob Ross to Cézanne's Miley Cyrus: With Pissarro's guidance, Cézanne ditched his palette knife violence for serene sketched outdoors, leading him to pioneer the groundbreaking style known as proto-abstract painting.
Source => artsy.net
6. A Falling Out with Émile Zola, Unfriended Over Fiction
Hanging on by a Zola thread: Paul Cézanne's friendship with bookworm buddy Émile Zola took an artistic cliff dive when he came to believe that Zola's novel "The Masterpiece" featured an unflattering, plein-air-painting doppelganger of himself named Claude Lantier, causing Cézanne to cut ties with his word-slinging chum.
Source => artnews.com
7. The Mountain That Stole Cézanne's Heart (30 Times)
Much like a clingy ex, Paul Cézanne couldn't seem to get Mont Sainte-Victoire out of his head - or off his canvas: In reality, the smitten artist painted about 30 different versions of the alluring French mountain, each time giving it a fresh angle, a flirtatious nuance, and a new reason to swipe right.
Source => en.wikipedia.org
8. The Perfect Recipe: Nature, Geometry, and a Dash of Cézanne
Like a scrumptious Pixar Ratatouille of art, with the ingredients of nature stirred together with geometry for an art-full serving: Paul Cézanne combined vertical and horizontal planes, capturing the essence of depth and roundness in his work, often using simple geometric shapes like spheres, cones, and cylinders as essential building blocks, but not quite reducing nature to just these forms.
Source => artforum.com
9. Cézanne: Father of All Art-Seasonings
If Cezanne were a spice, he'd be the father of all seasonings: Turns out, Paul Cezanne greatly influenced heavyweights like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Jasper Johns, and Ellsworth Kelly, who borrowed his style of personal expression to shape modern art, inspiring even contemporary photographers like Jeff Wall to recreate his masterpiece, "Card Players."
Source => npr.org