At the end of the 1880s, when he was no longer seeking to exhibit, artists and collectors discovered Cezanne's work in Père Tanguy's shop. There they found a formal radicalism that reinforced their research into a "pure" art, already engaged on the path toward abstraction.
Subsequently, Cezanne gradually gained recognition, and the reception of his work became abundant. From the first monographic exhibitions organised by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard to the great museum and international events, as well as the first major posthumous exhibitions such as the Salon d'Automne of 1907, he established himself as a major figure of modernity.
His work became a point of reference for the avant-gardes of the 20th century, who questioned the relationship between painting and reality and found in the idea that "art is a harmony parallel to nature" an essential tool for reflection.
From Cezanne onward, the triumph of modern art and that of formalism, or the reduction of painting to its fundamental elements of composition, have continued to be worked through or surpassed. Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley, Peter Doig... From lyrical abstraction to geometric abstraction, including hard edge painting, Cezanne remains a constant reference, sometimes claimed, sometimes reinterpreted, always debated. In the age of postmodernism, his status as the "father of modern art" continues to be questioned.
Cezanne et nous is the first exhibition to simultaneously tell this double story: that of his fundamental influence and that, running against the grain, of the artists who claimed him as their inspiration. The exhibition highlights a complex and plural history, made of appropriations, filiations and aesthetic tensions. It invites us to look at Cezanne through the successive gazes he has provoked, up to our contemporary gaze.
Exhibition co-produced by the GrandPalaisRmn, the Centre Pompidou and the public establishment of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'Orangerie - Valéry Giscard d'Estaing