Cezanne: A Life

With 32-pages of full-color inserts, and black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Alex Danchev gives us the first comprehensive assessment of the revolutionary work and restless life of Paul C©zanne to be published in decades. One of the most influential painters of his time and beyond, C©zanne was the exemplary artist-creator of the modern age who changed the way we see the world.
 
With brisk intellect, rich documentation, and eighty-eight color and fifty-two black-and-white illustrations, Danchev tells the story of an artist who was originally considered a madman, a barbarian, and a sociopath. Beginning with the unsettled teenager in Aix, Danchev takes us through the trials of a painter who believed that art must be an expression of temperament but was tormented by self-doubt, who was rejected by the Salon for forty years, who sold nothing outside his immediate circle until his thirties, who had a family that he kept secret from his father until his forties, who had his first exhibition at the age of fifty-six€"but who fiercely maintained his revolutionary beliefs. Danchev shows us how the beliefs C©zanne held and the life he led became the obsession and inspiration of artists, writers, poets, and philosophers from Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to Samuel Beckett and Allen Ginsberg. A special feature of the book is a remarkable series of C©zanne€s self-portraits, reproduced in full color.
 
C©zanne is not only the fascinating life of a visionary artist and extraordinary human being but also a searching assessment of his ongoing influence in the artistic imagination of our time. A stunning portrait of a monumentally important artist, this is a biography not to be missed.