His paintbrush set everything in motion: the landscape of Provence, the colourful still lifes, his portraits and the picturesque coast of southern France. More than any other artist, Paul Cézanne, the “Father of Modernism”, captured the light and the play of colours of the South in his pictures and lent them through his new pictorial language a liveliness and dynamism which continue to fascinate viewers to this day.

Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) painted the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a rocky massif near his birthplace Aix-en-Provence, some 80 times. The artist translated the interplay of sunlight and shadow on the constantly changing stone into pictures on the threshold of abstraction. Today they are seen as icons of art history and they underline Cézanne’s reputation as one of the most important pioneers of Classical Modernism. Countless artists, including Matisse, Derain, Picasso, Braque and Léger found inspiration in Cézanne’s ideas on colour modulation and pictorial composition. In this publication the author Christoph Wagner positions Cézanne as an artistic genius who opened up for future generations a completely new view of the world through his paintings and watercolours.