Cezanne

Paul Cezanne was truly one of the greats. Enormously ambitious, he lived through parental disapproval and early disappointment to follow his own path and win the admiration of young and old alike. He set out to 'redo Poussin from nature', and to 'make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of museums' - thus adding a naturalism to classicist ideals, while also giving the visual immediacy of the enfants terribles of 19th Century Parisian painting - with whom he exhibited in the 1870s - the timelessness of the Old Masters. He struggled to give visual coherence on a two-dimensional surface to the three dimensional forms in front of his eyes, whether landscape or still life, and in the process, became an inspiration for the next generation of enfants terribles: the Cubists. In this way he was a linchpin between the 'old' and the 'new': his relevance for modern and contemporary art cannot be over exaggerated.