Cezanne et nous - Billet Liberté

Cezanne et nous From 23 September 2026 to 17 January 2027

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7:30pm - Late opening on Friday until 10pm

A unique exhibition dedicated to Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) and his artistic legacy. From Paul Gauguin to Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley and Peter Doig, nearly 180 works trace how his work was discovered, interpreted, and transformed, from the late 19th century to today. In the late 1880s, when he was no longer seeking to exhibit, artists and collectors discovered Cezanne's work in Père Tanguy's shop. They found in it a formal radicalism that reinforced their search for a "pure" art, already on the path to abstraction. Subsequently, Cezanne gradually gained recognition and the reception of his work became abundant. From the first monographic exhibitions organised by art dealer Ambroise Vollard to major museum and international events, as well as the first major posthumous exhibitions like the Salon d’automne in 1907, he established himself as a major figure of modernity. His work became a point of reference for the 20th-century avant-gardes, who questioned the relationship between painting and reality and found in the idea that "art is a harmony parallel to nature" an essential tool for reflection. From Cezanne onwards, the triumph of modern art and that of formalism, or the reduction of painting to its fundamental compositional elements, continued to be explored or surpassed. Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley, Peter Doig... From lyrical abstraction to geometric abstraction, including "hard edge" painting, Cezanne remains a constant reference, sometimes claimed, sometimes reinterpreted, always discussed. In the era of postmodernism, his status as "father of modern art" continues to be questioned.