Cézanne et nous

An unprecedented 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. There, they found 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 prolific.

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 such as 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 elements of composition, 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 post-modernism, his status as "father of modern art" continues to be questioned. Cezanne et nous is the first exhibition to simultaneously tell this dual story: that of his fundamental influence and, counter-current, that of the artists who claimed him.

The exhibition highlights a complex and plural history, made of appropriations, filiations, and aesthetic tensions. It invites us to look at Cezanne through the successive gazes he inspired, up to our contemporary gaze. Co-exhibition