Paul Cézanne

Cézanne's structured brushwork and simplified forms influenced Cubism and later modern painting. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque both learned from the way Cézanne built landscapes, figures, and still lifes from planes of color.

Cézanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire many times near Aix-en-Provence. The repeated subject let him study how color, geometry, and perception could structure a landscape without relying on traditional illusion.

Still life gave Cézanne a controlled setting for exploring form, color, and spatial tension. His apples, tables, and bottles often look slightly tilted or unstable because he was testing perception rather than copying a single fixed viewpoint.

Cézanne exhibited with the Impressionists in the 1870s and knew artists such as Camille Pissarro. He later moved toward a more solid, constructed style, which is why he is usually classified as Post-Impressionist.