Paul Cézanne

Visual Arts French 1839 – 1906 99 quotes

A Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavor to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century.

Quotes by Paul Cézanne

The artist must be a creator.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I am a man of the mountains.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

The artist must be a master.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I am a man of the south.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

The artist must be a genius.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I am a man of the light.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I am a man of the truth.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

The artist must be a seeker.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I am a man of the spirit.

Letter to Émile Bernard 1904

I will astonish Paris with an apple.

Letter 1880

Art is a harmony parallel with nature.

Interview 1900

The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.

Letter 1895

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.

Letter 1902

I am a primitive. I see with my eyes, not with my intelligence.

Interview 1904

One must see one's model clearly and experience it. One must not be a slave to one's model.

Letter 1885

I seek in painting the means of making a statement.

Speech 1900

Genius is childhood recaptured.

Letter 1906

Right now my great desire is to learn to paint.

Letter 1870

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.

Letter 1890

Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed toward a central point.

Letter 1904