Visitors to “Cézanne Drawing” at the Museum of Modern Art may be astonished to learn that critics once complained that the late 19th-century French artist could not draw. With about 280 graphite, ink and gouache drawings and watercolors—over a third of them from private collectors—and a handful of related oil paintings, the staggeringly beautiful show proves otherwise. Organized by Jodi Hauptman, senior curator at MoMA, and associate curator Samantha Friedman, it also argues convincingly that Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), a foundational painter of modern art, produced his most radical work on paper.
The exhibition, arranged in broad, thematic terms, opens with loose study sheets and pages from the artist’s sketchbooks. Cézanne drew almost daily over the course of his career, using standard studio materials, and produced more than 2,000 extant works on paper. Though they rarely served as straightforward preparations for his oil paintings, his drawings pull us directly into his potent creative orbit…
After a dark year of building walls between ourselves and the world, “Cézanne Drawing” invites us to discover at an exhilaratingly intimate range the luminous genius of an artist whose work remains as rewarding as it is demanding.
— Mary Tompkins Lewis, from “‘Cézanne Drawing’ Review: Radical With a Pencil” (wsj.com, June 21, 2021)
Notes: 1) Paul Cezanne ‘Still Life with Cut Watermelon’ (c. 1900), 2) Cézanne’s ‘Coat on a Chair’ (1890-92).
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