STILL LIFE WITH BASKET OF APPLES
Paul Cézanne painted with bold brushwork and bright colors, typical of the post-impressionists (Van Gogh, Seurat, Gaugin). However, Cézanne stressed the essential architectural form and structure of all subjects in his compositions, emphasizing the fundamental shapes of the sphere, cube, and pyramid present in everyday objects.
Still-life painting was more important to Cézanne than to any of the other artists associated with Impressionism. For a painter as dedicated as he to the close and prolonged study of objects, it offered and unparalleled opportunity for formal analysis within a fixed and controlled space. The few familiar objects represented in the still lifes produced during Cézanne’s last decade may belong to the traditional repertoire of the genre; but the artist ignores their visual and tactile properties in order to concentrate on their formal essence. One would never look on these apples as something to eat. But they are beautiful spheres nonetheless.
Original is in the Art Institute of Chicago
Cézanne 1890-1894
Singer 1996