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Art Of The Day Weekly

#477 - from 15 June 2017 to 21 June 2017


Paul Cézanne, Mountains in Provence (The François Zola Dam), ca 1879, oil on canvas, 53.5 x 72.4 cm. Amgueddfa Cymru / National Museum of Wales, Cardiff - Gwendoline Davies Bequest, 1952 (exhibition at Fondation Gianadda).

IN THE AIR

How to rediscover Cézanne

MARTIGNY – Can we still read or write anything new about an artist as well known and collected as Cézanne? It seems impossible, given the price some of his works have reached in auctions. As proof of this, look at his Card Players, bought in a private transaction by the royal family of Qatar, for more than €200 million, making it one of the three most expensive paintings in the world. Yet, the Fondation Gianadda has took up the challenge and among some one hundred works gathered under a title inspired by Mahler, is presenting some ten works that have never been shown to the public. There are some training paintings, copied from artists such as Lancret or Prud’hon, a still life from his youth (Objet en cuivre et vase de fleurs) as well as landscapes of the famous little port in Marseille that marked modern art such as his Village des pêcheurs à l’Estaque, which will soon be visible in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum. We rediscover a painter with new eyes, we are in contact with “fresh” paintings, little or never seen before. One could almost feel thrown back into the past, back to the heroic times of 1894, when the French state refused several works by Cézanne bequeathed by Caillebotte…
Cézanne, le chant de la terre at the Fondation Gianadda, from 16 June to 19 November 2017.

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EXHIBITIONS


Paul Cézanne, Selfportrait, ca 1880, pencil on brown paper, 30,4x20,5 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel- Ankauf

Cézanne and paper

BASEL – What museum, in your opinion, holds the largest collection of drawings by Cézanne: the musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, his native town? The musée d’Orsay in Paris? The MoMA? Or the Pushkin museum? None of those! It is the Kunstmuseum in Basel! The institution’s cabinet of graphic arts holds the record number of 154 drawings by the artist, most of which were bought during the 30s from art dealer Werner Feuz, and later completed by buying from collectors Martha and Robert von Hirsch. The problem with sketchbooks is that they easily become undone and it is difficult to trace back the artist’s mind. A collection as important as that of the Kunstmuseum, which has rarely been shown due to its frailty, has helped reassemble the most important part of five different sketchbooks. We see Cézanne’s copies of the ancient masters, sketches of his son, landscapes of his region or still lives, his favorite subjects.
The Hidden Cézanne at the Kunstmuseum, from 10 June to 24 September 2017.

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Paul Cézanne, Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress, 1888-1890, oil on canvas, 116.5 × 89.5 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ittleson Jr. Purchase Fund, 1962, © Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Cézanne, his gallery

PARIS – A few more figures to illustrate the importance of this exhibit: Cézanne painted nearly one thousand paintings during his career but only one fifth of those are portraits. Yet it is a genre in which he exceled, leaving unforgettable works such as the famous representation of his friend Achille Lemperaire, a crippled artist, that was rejected at the Salon in 1870; the Garçon au gilet rouge; his gardener; his uncle Dominique or his good friend Zola with whom he broke all ties when he saw a caricature of himself in the writer’s L’Œuvre). Of course there is his companion, Hortense Fiquet, and the group of images of her – brought together- make up one of the most beautiful rooms in the exhibition, in red, blue, in the garden, on the yellow armchair, among others. The modest and discreet woman (1850-1922), whom he married late on in life, was the model of nearly fifty portraits and acquired a posthumous fame she would never have suspected.
Portraits de Cézanne at the musée d’Orsay, from 13 June to 24 September 2017.

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John Singer Sargent, The Church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, ca 1904, watercolour on paper, 36.8x53.3 cm, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon.

Sargent and watercolours

DULWICH – He was an American, born in Florence, died in London, and lived a part of his life in Paris, he traveled to Spain and Constantinople. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), was the perfect representative of the cosmopolitan artists of the 19th century. His generation was younger than Cézanne, and he is in a way the antithesis of the French artist: a fluttering, rootless, mundane while the artist from Aix was rather shy and held on tightly to his native town. Sargent was known in particular for his portraits of the members of high society, but with age, he increasingly enjoyed watercolorus. He found in them a certain freedom that excited him, far from his obligations to high society. The exhibition brings together some one hundred of his compositions – landscapes in Venice or the English countryside, characters such as pretty women or crippled Spanish soldiers.
Sargent: the Watercolours at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, from 21 June to 8 October 2017.

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OPENINGS OF THE WEEK


FESTIVAL PORTRAIT(S)

16 June 2017 - VICHY

A festival dedicated to portraits. In the image, can you identify artist Liu Bolin? (courtesy galerie Paris-Beijing)

Our selection of new exhibitions

IN BRIEF

BASEL – The Art Basel fair will be held from 15 to 18 June 2017.

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FRANCE – The Saison colombienne en France (Colombian season in France) will be

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