Explore the Background of this artwork.
Cézanne explored various genres throughout his artistic career, including landscapes and portraiture, but repeatedly returned to the subject of still life. It was a genre that historically had been disregarded in art as unimaginative, yet Cézanne challenged the establishment by focusing on everyday objects. He was particularly drawn to fruit, which he used to explore the correspondence between objects and the harmony and balance of composition. Although his objects appear to have been placed randomly, the images were carefully constructed to experiment with perspective.Cézanne was fascinated by the exploration of optics in art. His still life paintings were a study in the geometric forms of objects and also in the shifting ways that our eyes view them. He attempted to depict objects from various perspectives to capture the complexity of the visual image. He wrote that, "Painting from nature is not copying the object, it is realising one's sensations".Cézanne's distinctive brushwork and distortion of the subject eventually influenced new art styles during the 20th century such as Cubism.
still life Cubism