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# Cezanne and Us at the Grand Palais
- URL: https://www.ivarhagendoorn.com/blog/2026/11/01/cezanne-and-us-grand-palais/
- Published: 2026-11-01T20:36:42.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-01T20:52:54.000Z
- Description: The Grand Palais in Paris has organized a magnificent, albeit somewhat uneven, exhibition showcasing Cezanne's ongoing relevance.
- Author: Ivar Hagendoorn
- Tags: Blog, Art

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f7/c4/f7c4338c-1a69-4369-8416-8d74c9880bb6/content/images/2026/11/cezanne-and-us-grand-palais-1.jpg)

Four Cezanne's in one frame

In his monograph *If These Apples Should Fall*, art historian T.J. Clark observes that there was a time when painters looked upon Cézanne’s apple still lifes and recognized a profound, revolutionary shift in artistic vision. Those times are now behind us. Indeed, it requires a stretch of the imagination to perceive those familiar canvases as the cutting-edge provocations they once were. But look closely at, for example, “[Pommes et Biscuits](https://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/artworks/pommes-et-biscuits-196021?ref=ivarhagendoorn.com)” (1880) and you notice that the composition, with the table cut off at the left and right end covering the width of the canvas, is in fact quite interesting. Notice also how the painting is divided into three horizontal zones: the wall, the table and the floor. Then notice the colors of the apples and how they are distributed across the table. Notice the plate with the two biscuits, only half of which is visible. It breaks the symmetry, but that is precisely what makes the composition dynamic. By cutting off the table and the plate Cézanne takes a slice out of reality; he doesn't merely represent it. Now try to make a photo with your phone that is equally balanced and captivating. It’s not that easy.

Few painters have cast so long a shadow as Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). The exhibition “Cezanne and Us” at the Grand Palais in Paris, jointly organized by the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée de l’Orangerie, and the Centre Pompidou, sets out to measure that shadow, placing roughly seventy of his paintings beside a comparable number of works by artists who absorbed, adapted, or wrestled with his innovations. Spread across two floors and enriched by loans from other institutions and private collections, the exhibition covers every genre he practiced: nudes, portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Its governing principle is relentless juxtaposition, which keeps Cézanne visible from the first gallery to the last. 

The ground floor, arranged largely chronologically, is where the argument triumphs. Here Cézanne converses with Gauguin, Bonnard and the Nabis, the Fauves, the Cubists, and the pioneers of abstraction, young artists who discovered him through his dealer Ambroise Vollard or posthumous exhibitions of his work and concluded that representation had to give way to fragmentation, suggestion and vibrant, constructive color. The pairings are often revelatory. Signac’s pointillism visibly grows out of Cézanne’s side-by-side brushstrokes; Modigliani’s “Le Jeune Apprenti” (1917-19) echoes Cézanne’s “Le Garçon au gilet rouge” (1888-1890); and a circular gallery devoted to still lifes gathers Cubist, Futurist, and Fauvist experiments around his apples and tableware. Possibly my favorite pairing is that of Picasso’s “Grand Nature morte” (1917) and Cézanne’s “Nature morte aux oignons” (1896-98). Altogether I must have spent almost ten minutes closely looking at both paintings.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f7/c4/f7c4338c-1a69-4369-8416-8d74c9880bb6/content/images/2026/11/cezanne-and-us-grand-palais-2.jpg)

Cézanne (left) and Picasso (right)

It was, as always, a joy to see so many classical modernist masterpieces in one show. Mondrian’s "The Flowering Apple Tree" (1912) gained new meaning seen next to Cézanne, so did Malevich’s "Bader" (1911) in a room with five of Cézanne’s multifigure bather paintings.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f7/c4/f7c4338c-1a69-4369-8416-8d74c9880bb6/content/images/2026/11/cezanne-and-us-grand-palais-3.jpg)

Bridget Riley (left) and Cézanne (right)

Upstairs, the exhibition fizzles out. There are some great paintings on show, including a magnificent Nicolas de Staël, “Les Toits” (1952), that I don’t recall seeing at the great [Nicolas de Staël retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris](https://www.ivarhagendoorn.com/blog/2023/11/25/nicolas-de-stael-at-the-musee-d-art-moderne-de-paris/), but the connection between Pierre Soulages and Cézanne was lost on me, except perhaps as a counterpoint to Cézanne’s colorful paintings. And while Bridget Riley’s striped canvas resonates beautifully with a Cézanne landscape, Georg Baselitz’s inverted portrait “Meine Mutter, Madame Cézanne” (1998) pales next to Cézanne’s “Portrait de Madame Cézanne” (1885-95). Works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann referencing Cézanne seem equally trite.

In the final two rooms the exhibition regains momentum, but that is because one section could have been called “Cezanne and me”. Many of Cézanne's paintings depict rocks, reflecting his interest in geology and his belief that "to paint a landscape well, I must first discover its geological foundations". This structural dimension is central to his work, and it is nowhere more evident than in his paintings of the Bibémus quarries. I, too, have long harbored a fascination for rock formations and the intricate patterns embedded within geological structures. I am, of course, not the first to zoom in on rock formations, filling the frame to create a near abstract composition, but I never considered that I was following in the footsteps of Cézanne. I now look at his work with renewed interest.

By treating the canvas as a self-governing construction rather than a window onto nature, Cézanne freed generations of artists to invent purely pictorial space, and as this exhibition makes clear, Picasso’s claim that he fathered them all still rings true.

**Cezanne et nous** is at the Grand Palais in Paris until 17 January 2027\. Note: the organizers omitted the accent from the exhibition title and publicity material. The French Wikipedia [clarifies the issue](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul%5FC%C3%A9zanne?ref=ivarhagendoorn.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f7/c4/f7c4338c-1a69-4369-8416-8d74c9880bb6/content/images/2026/11/rock-formation-2.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f7/c4/f7c4338c-1a69-4369-8416-8d74c9880bb6/content/images/2026/11/rock-formation-1.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f7/c4/f7c4338c-1a69-4369-8416-8d74c9880bb6/content/images/2026/11/rock-formation-3.jpg)

Cézanne and me