Biography of Paul CézanneThe French painter Paul Cézanne, who exhibited little during his life and pursued his interests increasingly in artistic isolation, is today considered one of the great precursors of modern painting, both for for the way he evolved to put on canvas exactly what his eyes saw in nature and for the qualities of pictorial form he achieved through a unique treatment of space, mass and color. Cézanne was a contemporary of the Impressionists, but he went beyond their interests in individual brushwork and the fall of light on objects, to create, in his words, "something more solid and durable, like museum art." Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence in southern France on January 19, 1839. He went to school in Aix, forming a close friendship with the novelist Emile Zola. He also studied law there from 1859 to 1861, but at the same time continued to attend drawing courses. Against his father's implacable resistance, he decided he wanted to paint and in 1861 he joined Zola in Paris. His father's reluctant consent at that time brought him financial support and, later, a large inheritance on which he could live without difficulty. In Paris he met Camille Pissarro and met other members of the Impressionist group, with whom he exhibited in 1874 and 1877. Cézanne, however, remained a stranger to their circle; from 1864 to 1869 he submitted his work to the official SALON and saw it constantly rejected. His paintings of 1865-70 constitute what is usually called his first "Romantic" period. Extremely personal in nature, it deals with bizarre subjects of violence and fantasy with harsh, dark colors and extremely heavy varnish. is appropriately divided into three phases. In the early 1870s, through a mutual aid association with Pissarro, with whom he painted outside Paris in Auvers, he assimilated the color and lighting principles of Impressionism and loosened his brushwork; yet he retained his sense of mass and the interaction of planes, as in The Hanged Man's House (1873; Musée d'Orsay, Paris).Cézanne, Paul: Biography------------ - ------------------------------------------------- - ----------------The French painter Paul Cézanne, who exhibited little during his lifetime and pursued his interests