Brief Biography And Analysis Of Renaissance Painters

Paul CÐ"©zanne was born on January 19, 1839, as the son of a wealthy banker in the southern French town of Aix-en-Provence. CÐ"©zanne develops artistic interest at an early age and joins his friend and author Emile Zola in Paris in 1861, despite his father's protests. He admired the works of EugÐ"Ёne Delacroix, Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet. Though attracted by the more radical art forms in Paris, he destroys many canvases during depressive moments and returns home full of self-doubt. A year spent working with his father, however, convinced him to try a painter's life again. CÐ"©zanne's early works were dark and composed of heavy, fluid pigment suggesting the moody, romantic expression of previous generations.

At 30, CÐ"©zanne changes his style and his habits. The black and morbid atmosphere of his painting slowly changes as he concentrates on landscape subjects. This period is also known as "constructive", characterized by the grouping of parallel, hatched brushstrokes that have the power to build a feeling of mass. Few years later, Pissarro introduces him to Impressionist painting and his work is finally exhibited together with other Impressionist works in 1874.

Pissarro's influence is seen through the somewhat lightened palette. However, CÐ"©zanne reacted against the lack of structure in the Impressionist paintings and said that he intended to make Impressionism into "something solid and durable, like the art of the museums". He did innovate beyond Impressionism and is ranked alongside the Post-Impressionist artists Seurat, Van Gogh and Gauguin. For many years, still-lifes and landscapes were CÐ"©zanne's main topics.

The next few years, CÐ"©zanne becomes increasingly isolated from his family in Paris while he stays in Aix. Cutting himself off from the outer world, he lives the life of a recluse. In his late fifties however, CÐ"©zanne's work finally began to attract the attention it deserves. Ambroise Vollard, a renowned art dealer, buys every painting from CÐ"©zanne's studio in 1897. Young artists travel to Aix to see him at work. In the later years, CÐ"©zanne's health began to deteriorate. On October 22 1906, CÐ"©zanne dies of pneumonia. He is also called the "father of modern art" today.

CÐ"©zanne: Style and reason behind the style

CÐ"©zanne had slight variations in tone and color over long periods of time (from dark tones to bright hues). His analysis of color became simpler and more direct and his expression bolder and stronger. Elements from nature were the most frequent subjects of his paintings. However, CÐ"©zanne places more emphasis on the act of painting (brushstrokes, color, etc.) than the actually subject matter of the painting. Cezanne was in the process of developing a system of regular parallel brushstrokes to give density and unity to a painting. To CÐ"©zanne it really did not matter whether he was painting an apple or a man, because the fundamental structure of form and color was the same. He also abandoned the use of foreground and background. He observed forms from geometry, namely the cylinder, sphere and the cone, paving the way to Cubism. CÐ"©zanne was very temperamental and lived most of his life as a recluse. Therefore, He took out his frustrations on the canvas.

CÐ"©zanne: The Card Players (two players; 1890-1895)

On either side of a vertical bottle, counterbalanced by the horizontal lines of the table, two men have taken their places at opposite ends of the table, silent and motionless, concentrating hard on the game before them. The game has not yet begun and the players still hold all the cards. Geometric shapes are quite obvious in this painting, such as the bodies of both men and the hat of the man on the left, which are somewhat cylindrical. Because of this, the bodies are not proportioned to the head. The hat of the man on the right has a spherical shape, while the bottle in the middle is a cone. Being reduced to only two players, the palette was likewise reduced to monochrome shades of brown as well. If you look closely, the colors are not actually blended together very well, but are simply painted side by side.

CÐ"©zanne: House of the Hanged Man (1873)

In this painting, Cezanne painted with juxtaposed brushstrokes, which he superimposed in places, giving a solid structure to the different elements of the landscape. There are many geometrical figures found here, mainly triangles, which make up the rooftops and even the mountain in the background. Together with the brushstrokes which seem to move towards the center of the painting, the arrangement of the triangles give the elements of the landscape density and volume. The colors used are very subdued tones of green and brown.

EugÐ"Ёne Henri Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin, the most exotic of the Post-Impressionists, was born in Paris to a French journalist and a Peruvian woman. He was married in 1873, and it was not until ten years later that Gauguin decided to give up the business world and devote himself to the artistic. After a period in Rouen where he stayed with Pissarro, Gauguin went to Copenhagen with his Danish wife only to leave his family forever a few months later. Gauguin was then past thirty-five and almost penniless. Degas, who approved of his theories on the importance of line, loaned him money, which enabled Gauguin to go to Pont-Aven where he and Emile Bernard developed Synthetism (a genre of French painting characterized by bright flat shapes and symbolic treatments of abstract ideas).

Abandoning his earlier Impressionism, Gauguin painted and made ceramics and woodcarvings to earn money. He spent 1888, the year of his great Synthetist work "The Yellow Christ", in Arles with Vincent Van Gogh. This adventure ended in near tragedy as Van Gogh exhibited signs of madness. Gauguin returned shortly to Brittany before leaving for Tahiti on his constant quest for the simple life and the peace of mind he would never really find. His stay in Tahiti ended in 1901 when seriously ill with syphilis and in trouble with the French authorities. He moved to the Marquesas, seeking an easier and cheaper life. His health, unfortunately, deteriorated still further but he continued to paint until he died on May 8, 1903.

Gauguin: Style and Reason behind the style

"Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions."

-Gauguin

Gauguin