January 2007
Volume 1, Number 1

Inside this issue...

Artist Of The Month: Paul Cézanne
Art In The News 
Outside The Lines

Artist Of The Month: Paul Cézanne 

Paris in the nineteenth century was a center for artistic innovation, and it was there that Cézanne met the Impressionist Camille Pissarro, an artist who would guide Cézanne away from his initial dark palette and towards colors that reflected a brighter, more natural light.

Although Cézanne knew and mixed with the Impressionists in Paris, including Manet and Degas, he was not particularly sociable. His shyness, short temper and bouts of depression made it difficult for him to form friendships and influenced his early works. His Dark Period (1861-1870), which dates from this time, is characterized by a focus on figures and above all by a use of somber colors, especially black.

Following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, Cézanne left the French capital with his mistress, Marie-Hortense Fiquet, moving eventually to Pontoise. Painting alongside Pissarro, Cézanne began creating more landscapes and switched to brighter colors to created works that would lead critics to refer this stage of his life as The Impressionist Period (1870-1878). Indeed, Cézanne's works were shown in both the first and third Impressionist exhibitions, which took place in Paris in 1874 and 1877. In neither of those exhibitions did Cézanne receive warm reviews from the critics.

By the early 1880s Cézanne's life had become more stable. The family, which now included a son also called Paul, moved back to Provence and in 1886, Cézanne married Hortense and inherited his father's estate. Impressed by Mount St. Victoire near the house of Hortense's brother, Cézanne was able to combine his Impressionist techniques with a subject containing the solidity and permanence which he felt Impressionist art lacked, and which would later be felt in Cubism.

The Final Period (1890-1905) of Cézanne's life was not a happy one. He had broken off relations with his lifelong friend, Zola, after the writer had based a character on Cézanne's life, and diabetes affected his personality to the extent that his marriage became strained. Just as acclaim for his work grew, Cézanne himself became increasingly reclusive, repainting the subjects of his old works in different ways. His masterpiece, The Great Bathers, for example, with its geometric lines and focused composition clearly shows his progression from a painting of the same subject made more than thirty years before which focused solely on the figures themselves. 

Cézanne died of pneumonia in 1906 leaving a large oeuvre that include, The Murder, The Bather and Rideau, Crichon et Compotier, which became the world's most expensive still-life painting when it sold for $60.5m in 1999.

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Art In The News

CAT Scan Reveal Madonna's Second Face

A CAT scan on a painting of the Madonna by the Early Renaissance artist, Antonello da Messina, has revealed a second, less refined face of a woman beneath the paint's surface. The Annunziata, which hangs in the Palazzo Abatellis museum in Palermo, was examined by the Sicilian Region Restoration Center, which also tested the portrait of the "unknown sailor" kept at the Mandralisca Museum in Cefalu. That painting had been scratched by a woman who claimed that its smile masked the face of the devil.

Source: Agenzia Giornialistica Italia

4-Year Old Wins International Art Prize

Soham Das has never heard of Monet, Da Vinci or Rembrandt, but at just four years old, the Indian-born pre-schooler has already picked up "The Rose Of Lidice," a diploma and medal awarded by the Czech embassy for "exceptional successful creative work."

Das's "Cat Family" showed  a mother cat with two kittens. Das colored the cats red and their eyes blue, reports Kolkota Newsline.

"His teachers are very fond of him and wanted to give him double promotion. But I and his father decided not to go ahead with it because we don't want to rush him," said his mother.

Source: Kolkata Newsline

Outside The Lines

Chiaroscuro - Italian for "light-dark," the term is used to describe a sharp contrast in light and shade in a painting.

Achromatic - An absence of color or hue. Usually refers to blacks, whites and greys.

Arabesque - Decoration based on plant patterns and curving lines.

1... the number of paintings Vincent Van Gogh sold in his lifetime.

12... the number of years it took Leonardo Da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa's lips.

46... the number of years Matisse's Le Bateau hung upside down in New York's MoMa before anyone noticed.

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