The genius of Cézanne and his big Jas de Bouffan workshop

In front of the house located in the outskirts of Aix. Meanwhile, a vast alley of plane trees planted at the beginning of the 20th century leads to the Bastide and the rear another alley is planted with chestnut trees.

Paul Cézanne lived 40 years there, from his twenty years until 1899 alternating with Paris where he spent half his time. Nevertheless, The Bastide was sold in 1899 after the death of genius cézanne his big jas Cézanne’s father because one of the sisters of Paul. Nevertheless, Cézanne needed the money of the sale to reimburse her husband’s game debts.

In 1901, Cézanne then installed her workshop (which we still visit) on the Les Lautes hill, facing the Sainte-Victoire mountain. For example, He worked there six years, until his premature death. Moreover, In 1906. For example, in fact, the painter, still as gross and atrabilary, then 67 years old, lonely, diabetic, painted too long in the rain, at the top of the hill of the Laks, in front of the Sainte-Victoire mountain which he loved so much and whose view would today be threatened by a real estate project of the city. For example, He died a few days later from a pleurisy on October 23, 1906. Additionally, For example, Until the end, he was “on the grounds “as he said, faced with nature in genius cézanne his big jas a hand -to -hand combat.

Father’s place

This summer, you have to start visits with that of Bouffan Jas (you have to book your “niche”). Similarly, It was there that he made his first works on the walls of the paternal show when he was twenty years old. Meanwhile, in his workshop on the second floor that his father had installed him with a large glass roof overlooking the North. However, We have often insisted on the strong opposition between Cézanne. Furthermore, his father who would have liked his son to have a career in the bank but a visit to the Jas shows on the contrary that the father helped the son, leaving him to cover the painting fair that we were able to find and who are exhibited at the exhibition at the Granet Museum and by developing this workshop. In addition. For example, he genius cézanne his big jas paid her a rent all his life allowing him to continue his artistic adventure (Cézanne sold very little during his lifetime).

Cézanne. Meanwhile, the revolutionary, the 2006 exhibition

At the Granet Museum, you can see the magnificent portrait that Cézanne made in 1866 of his seated father, reading the newspaper The eventthe one in which Zola wrote, Cézanne’s childhood friend.

The Bastide and its park remained “in their juice” without furniture or works by Cézanne but the guided tours are excellent and make it possible to revive Cézanne.

The restoration project must still continue. Moreover, it is planned that the farm will become a Cézanien research and documentation center, head of the reasoned catalog.

At the Granet Museum

It is then necessary to see the new large exhibition Cézanne at the Granet museum. Furthermore, with even more works (130 works in total) than that of 2006 then organized for the centenary of the painter’s death.

With Bruno Ely, director of the Granet and Grand Cézanien museum, as a commissioner. Moreover, It is called Cézanne at Jas de Bouffan.

“Me living. However, never a work by Cézanne will return to the Granet museum”his curator genius cézanne his big jas exclaimed at the beginning of the last century. Meanwhile, For decades, the beautiful city in the south has snubbed its genius. In 1970 was built in 1970 a highway in the Jas de Bouffan park. Today, the city catches up wonderfully.

Cézanne has never painted the social life of her time, never workers or peasants at work. He never painted a human feeling. His subjects are timeless: nature. light, form, the divine, the strange ties between the one who sees and the thing seen, between the feeling and the feeling as explained by the philosopher Merleau-Ponty. His hunt is to clear the form to reach the unspeakable. the unbeatable, which arises from things, the obscure role of air and space.

But Cézanne will look for his subjects near his home. At the Jas de Bouffan first. as this exhibition shows, which acted for him as a laboratory where he experiences to answer the question: “Will I get to the goal so much sought and so long pursued?”

It was in Aix that he took drawing lessons. sought a style as shown by the large frescoes of the living room which were removed by the new owners of the Bastide at the beginning of the 20th century and sold apart.

It was there that he came back so often painting the bastide. its park, the landscapes, the still lifes, there that he sometimes used the peasants of the jas as models as the famous painting shows Card players of which we see a version of 1893-1896.

Cézanne frequently left Aix whose genius cézanne his big jas kill he had to join his friend Zola in Paris. practice what he called a “Couillarde” painting, very black, before lightening his palette in contact with Pissaro as shown by the exhibition Pissaro-Cézanne which was held in Orsay in 2006.

He then constantly returned to Aix, disappearing for a moment to the point that his Parisian friends believed him dead. He discovered the South Light there at the Estaque near Marseille. Its palette now affects transparency.

Genius cézanne his big jas

Where everything was born

His subjects were few. But what does it matter. He painted the Sainte-Victoire mountain 60 times, in a sumptuous melee of which we see a fine example at the exhibition. The shape is still marked, the color plans give a perspective, even if the touch is already placed in flat. The blue of the sky slides into the greenery. vice versa, genius cézanne his big jas the space and the color give birth to the shapes. Cubism is coming. Cézanne must even underline the profile of the mountain to indicate it as the colors mingle. Cézanne reinvents nature, he said: “Have sensations and read nature. “

For him, an art that does not have emotion as an engine cannot remain. He sought to express the unfalurated, the informable, the mysterious source of the sensations. He also said that it was necessary genius cézanne his big jas “Treat nature with the cylinder. the sphere and the cone “and for that, he dismayed or abolished the perspective to better represent what he felt, he frees the color by fragmenting the form. “”I am a primitive of a new art “, he proclaimed.

The exhibition revolves around Bouffan’s jas. where everything was born, with the reconstruction of the large living room, then relatives in jas, self -portraits (in each room we find another), then the landscape, dead nature and its famous fruits, bathers and bathers, who also break with the usual canons. They have strange bodies. are gathered by sex in ancestral rites: men seem to participate in a baptism of Christ and women in the rescue of Moses.

Cézanne-Pissarro. friends and so different, the 2006 exhibition

We discover the portrait of the gardener Vallier and that so melancholy of Hortense, the wife of Paul Cézanne. genius cézanne his big jas If it looks so sad, it may be rather weariness to have to pose so often. Cézanne painted very slowly. Sometimes a quarter of an hour flowed between two keys. When he painted his merchant Ambroise Vollard, the latter, worried, asked after 115 (!) Pose sessions, if the result was good. Cézanne replied that the white plastron was starting to be good.

His works at the exhibition (including many drawings. watercolors) are already very modern, with their side “not fine” Leaving pieces of white canvas, in his watercolors (perhaps personal sketches?), He becomes almost abstract, expressing a landscape by a few touches in an ocean of white. The space becomes mental.

In the painter there is a permanent tension between his asceticism. his sensuality chosen, between the baroque who inhabits him and the classicism of an architectural painting. When he paints the careers of Bibémus next genius cézanne his big jas to Aix. whose stones built Aix, he made his pilgrimage to Rome. He then painted Aix in hollow, exploring the past as we painted the Colosseum.

Cézanne was as claimed to the right by the supporters of the return to order as to the left, by the revolutionaries of painting: Kandisky, the Cubistes, the Fauves, Picasso who owned 12 Cézanne, Gauguin, fan of Cézanne. And genius cézanne his big jas its large bathers announce the ladies of Avignon de Picasso.

The exhibition is rich in countless loans especially of American museums. A visit this summer by Aix is a must. What to consolidate the idea that he was the father of modern art.

Cézanne at Jas de Bouffan. Granet Museum, Aix-en-Provence until October 12 and visit the Jas de Bouffan every day from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Info on cezanne2025.com