Paul Cézanne
Mont Sainte-Victoire
ca 1905
oil on canvas
60 x 72 cm
Paul Cézanne was one of the most innovative
artists I have ever seen. His own unique style emerged from impressionism, his
sensitive touch and beautiful color palette are of a rare quality.
My admiration started at an early age, since the
first time I saw his painting 'Mont
Sainte-Victoire', ca 1905. This painting had a big impression on me,
this was partly because of the amazing colors, but mostly it was the
abstraction of the landscape, this was beyond my imagination at that time. The mountain on this painting will
become his inspiration and obsession and ultimately his death.
Cézanne painted this when he was 66 years old
and he died a year later. He was caught in a storm while he was painting on
this mountain. Because of his obsession with paining and this mountain he
stayed there to finish the painting, after two hours he decided to go home. On
his way back he collapsed and was found hours later, he suffered from
hypothermia. The next day he wanted to go back to finish his painting, but half
way up the mountain he lost his consciousness. They brought him back to his bed
and he never left that bed again. He died a couple of days later.
With the story of his death in the back of my
head, it seems to me that Cézanne already painted the storm that would kill him
a year later. The dark sky that slowly tries to take over the landscape and
wants to swallow the painting. But still there are some sunbeams that cut
through the dark sky as if they try to say that there is still a strong force
that will try to beat this heavy storm. Unfortunately we know that that force
wasn't strong enough.
Years later, when I became a student at the art
academy I realized that my own obsession with
abstract art started with this painting by
Cézanne. Of course this is still more or less a figurative
painting, but it's far off from being a
realistic view of the mountain. Later, after painting merely
pure abstract paintings, I started to
incorporate figurative representations of things drawn from the
real world, things like tape and bubble-wrap, in
order to make abstract paintings that play with the
associative character of the human brain. This
is actually the mirror image of what Cézanne did
when he incorporated abstraction in his
paintings, trying to come closer to the expreience of what you
see rather than being just another
representation of what already exists.
Maarten
van Soest, 2015
'I
wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the
sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something
else'.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Maarten van Soest (NL)
No Title (Unpacked nr. 6)
2013
acrylic on MDF
60 x 50 cm
Maarten van Soest (NL)
No Title (Sawed nr. 1)
2012
acrylic on MDF
50 x 45 cm
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