Cézanne: The Ey Exhibition

Exhibition at the Art Institute, Chicago, 15 May - 5 September 2022 ;
Tate Modern, London, 5 October 2022 - 12 March 2023

"With an apple, I want to astonish Paris," Cézanne once declared. The artist left his native Aix-en-Provence for the French capital at the age of twenty and did just that. Cézanne's still lifes, landscapes and paintings of bathers encouraged generations of artists to break the rules, thus changing the course of painting history. Torn between seeking official recognition and embracing rebellious Impressionism before relentlessly pursuing his own unique artistic language, Cezanne strove to be modern while remaining deeply sceptical of the world in which he lived.

This exhibition catalogue pays tribute to Cézanne and his central role in the development of modern art. Through 80 oils, 40 watercolours and drawings, and 2 complete sketchbooks, the book focuses on the tensions and contradictions in Cézanne's work, while seeking to understand him in his own context, that of an ambitious young painter, proud of the southern Mediterranean, but eager to succeed in metropolitan Paris.