1839-1906. French Post-Impressionist painter,
a leading figure in the development of modern
art. He broke away from the Impressionists'
spontaneous vision to develop a style that
captured not only light and life, but the
structure of natural forms in landscapes,
still lifes, portraits, and his series of
bathers. He was born in Aix-en-Provence,
where he studied, and was a friend of the
novelist Emile Zola. In 1872 Cezanne met
Pissarro and lived near him in Pontoise,
outside Paris, but soon abandoned
Impressionism. His series of paintings of
Mont Sainte-Victoire in Provence from the
1880s into the 1900s show an increasing
fragmentation of the painting's surface and a
movement towards abstraction, with layers of
colour and square brushstrokes achieving
monumental solidity. He was greatly revered
by early abstract painters, notably Picasso
and Braque.