Cézane Drawings

Although he is most often celebrated as a painter,Paul Cézanne’s extraordinary vision was fuelled by hisexperiments on paper. In pencil and watercolour, onindividual sheets and across the pages of sketchbooks,the artist described form through multiple probinglines; realized compositions through repetitions andtransformations; and conjured kaleidoscopic colourthrough laborious layering of watercolour. It is in thesematerial realities of drawing where we see Cézanne at hismost modern: embracing the unfinished, making processvisible, and actively inviting the viewer to participate in theact of perception.

To date, exhibitions devoted to Cézanne havetended to focus on a single genre, a specific theme, oran isolated moment within the artist’s oeuvre. Publishedto accompany an exhibition at The Museum of ModernArt, this is the first major effort to unite drawings fromacross Cézanne’s entire career, tracing the developmentof his practice on paper, exploring working methods thattranscend subject, and devoting research to conservationas well as curatorial fronts.