The famous French painter Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), was a representative figure of the post-Impressionism. He was revered as the father of the "new art" since the 19th century. As an advent of modern art, modern Western painters called him "the father of modern art" or "the father of modern painting. His pursuit of the sense of objects’ volume and performance inspired many for "Cubism". His objective sense of color was unique and greatly different from that of most painters. Many people treat Paul Cezanne as the first truly modern artist for he transformed from Impressionism to Cubism.
When Cezanne painted something like the fruits peach and apple, he used paint to outline the skin and caught a glimpse of their reflections. Most of his works embody his personal thought of artistic, showing a strong sense of geometry, ignoring the accuracy of the texture and shape of objects. He emphasizes heavy, the overall sense of volume and the relationship between different objects. Sometimes he even gives up the individual independence and authenticity in order to seek the harmony of the various relationships.
His early work shows the influence of French masters Courbet and Delacroix, but later in 1877 Cezanne abandoned Impressionism. Cezanne in early time mostly used realistic painting technique, and choose real but difficult scenario as the subject matter of the painting. In his later years, the painting style changed, left us pieces of mild and bright landscape paintings. He thought that art should be harmonious with nature.
One of very important genre for Cezanne was the still life, which he has made about 200 pieces over the course of 40 years. In still life paintings, he painted the fruit dish with a shallow so as to compressed space. In the eyes of Cezanne, the essence of his practice is modulating. Kitchen Table is one of his still life painting; it is a complicated combination of many objects in different viewpoints. It is through the repetition of similar shapes and arrangement of different colors that Cezanne was able to make if into perfect balance.
The Kitchen Table
From Cezanne, Western artists turned to self-expression in their works, and gradually formed all kinds of formalism genre. The art of Cezanne made a great contribution to the emergence of modern painting. Cezanne spent the last years painting a series of works of Mont Sainte-Victoire. Among painters in the 19th-century who did make effort to explore the development of painting, the most significant one is Cezanne. He is a lonely man to be well understood. It changed the entire process of the Western art due to his subjectivity of painting. We can say that modern art starts from Cezanne.
