Paul Cézanne is the bridge between 19th-century Impressionism and 20th-century Cubism, described by both Matisse and Picasso as 'the father of us all.' Working largely in isolation in his native Aix-en-Provence, he developed a revolutionary method of building form through color patches applied with deliberate, systematic brushstrokes — abandoning conventional perspective in favor of multiple simultaneous viewpoints. His obsessive return to the same subjects — Mont Sainte-Victoire, bathers, card players, apples — was not repetition but rigorous investigation. He submitted work to the Paris Salon repeatedly, was rejected almost every time, and exhibited rarely; yet by his death in 1906 he had profoundly influenced nearly every significant artist of the next generation.
