Cezanne

Product Description

This is a remarkable new biography of a cultural icon. Today we view Cezanne as a monumental figure but during his lifetime (1839-1906) many did not understand him or his work. With brilliant insight drawing or a vast range of primary sources Alex Danchev tells the story of an artist who was never accepted into the official Salon: he was considered a revolutionary at best an a barbarian at worst whose paintings were unfinished distorted & strange. His work sold to no one outside his immediate circle until his late thirties & he maintained that to paint from nature is not to copy an object; it is to represent its sensations
- a belief way ahead of his time with stunning implications that became the obsession of many other artists & writers from Matisse & Braque to Rilke & Gertrude Stein. Beginning with the restless teenager from Aix who was best friends with Emile Zo at school Danchev carries us through the trials of a painter tormented by self-doub who always remained an outsider both of society & the bustle of the art world. Cezanne: A Life" delivers not only the fascinating days & years of the visionary who would astonish Paris with an apple with interludes analysing his self-portrait
- but also a complete assessment of Cezannes ongoing influence through artistic imaginations in our own time. He is as this life shows a cultural icon comparable Marx or Freud."