Cezanne and Us

These events contributed to the artist’s critical and commercial success, establishing him as the father of modernity. The exhibition shows the many ways in which Cézanne’s work was received by the international and European avant garde movements of the 1910s, which all questioned the relationship between artwork and reality and reflected, like Cézanne, on the idea that “art is a harmony parallel with nature”.

This rich and varied reception from the very beginning is the central theme of the exhibition. It shows how, starting with Cézanne, the triumph of modern art and that of the formalism associated with it – the reduction of painting to the fundamental elements of its composition – are constantly being worked on or surpassed. The artist became one of the uncontested fathers of Western modern art. In the post-war period, he was still regarded by figures driving a revival of abstraction in Europe and the United States, whether proponents of lyrical and optical abstraction or of hard-edge painting. It is this nuanced history, in which each defends their own version of Cézanne just as much as the path they are themselves exploring, that is presented here. It  further asks what has become of him in the post-modern era that is challenging his mythical position.

Cézanne and us is the first exhibition to tell the two sides of this story, from the 1880s to the present day. The story of his fundamental influence and the reverse narrative of artists who claimed to be inspired by him and made him “the father of us all”, in the words of Picasso. This is how we arrive at shifting, complex and sometimes contradictory representations of an artist who was rejected from the Paris School of Fine Arts but became one of the cornerstones of Western modern art: “Cézanne and us” speaks to both the “us” of the artists and the “us” of the viewers, who look at Cézanne through them.