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Paul Cezanne
He was born in Aix-en-Provence and went to school there. From 1859 to 1861, he studied law while still continuing drawing lessons. Against the objections of his father, Paul Cezanne decided to pursue an artistic career and left for Paris with his friend Emile Zola in 1861. Gradually, his father became reconciled to his course of life and supported him in it. He eventually received a large inheritance, on which he could live with ease. In Paris, he met Camille Pissarro and other Impressionists. Paul Cezanne began with the light, airy painting of the Impressionists, but gradually solidified it and made it more architectural. In his words: "I want to make of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art in the museums."
Paul Cezanne structurally ordered whatever he perceived into simple forms and colour planes to create the most telling image of the subject matter. His paintings were included in the first exhibition of the Salon des Refus�s in 1863, which displayed works not accepted by the jury of the official Paris Salon, which had rejected C�zanne's submissions every year from 1864 to 1869. To early 20th-century modernists, Paul Cezanne was the founder of modern painting. Henri Matisse called him "the father of us all." His geometric essentialisation of forms influenced Cubism, in particular. He is widely known as the father of modern art. C�zanne and Zola fell out over Zola's fictionalized depiction of C�zanne in the novel, "L'Oeuvre" ("The Masterpiece", 1886). He exhibited little in his lifetime and worked in increasing artistic isolation, remaining in the South of France, far from Paris. He concentrated on a few subjects: still lifes, studies of bathers, and especially the Mont Sainte Victoire, of which he painted innumerable views. In 1906, Paul Cezanne collapsed while painting in the open during a thunderstorm. One week later, on October 15, he died of pneumonia.
On May 10, 1999, C�zanne's painting, "Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier" sold for US$60.5 million, the fourth highest price paid for a painting up to that time.
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