More than 250 pieces on paper with the signature of Paul Cézanne, between drawings and watercolors, show the most crucial and unknown facet of the French painter in an exhibition that opens its doors this Thursday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA).
‘Cézanne Drawing’ (Cézanne drawing) re-examines the work of one of the artistic exponents of the 20th century, analyzing his creative process along with new data that are known about his career of almost six decades, in which it is estimated that he made 2,100 works on paper .
The graphite pieces include several personal portraits in which he, his wife and his son appear, as well as study drawings of still lifes, nudes or sculptures by Pierre Puget; while many of his delicate watercolors are of bathers.
And it is that Cézanne (1839–1906), usually recognized as a painter and for styles that range from Impressionism to Constructivism, saw drawing as something fundamental that allowed him to investigate and experiment, and he dedicated himself to it until his last days in his studio in Les Lauves.
MoMA sought to return these works on paper “to their central position in the artist’s work, demonstrating the extent to which this medium facilitated his legendary innovations and emphasizing how it used particular materials and techniques to create meaning,” according to a note.
The museum presents the viewer with the ‘study sheets’ in which various subjects are represented at different scales and different styles, orientations and perspectives, which makes visible the artist’s continuous search for the relationship between motifs and genres that a priori have nothing in common.
The exhibition also shows a series of oil paintings from the MoMA collection and other private and public collections around the world to compose that is considered one of the largest collections of the Frenchman’s work in the United States.
‘Cézanne Drawing’ opens this Thursday for members of the art gallery and will be available to the general public from June 6 to September 25.
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