Beyond Impressionism: How Cézanne Redefined Painting at the Fondation Beyeler

The exhibition illustrates how Cézanne transformed painting and, in the words of Pablo Picasso, became “the father of us all”. The studio in the South of France served as Cézanne’s laboratory, where he explored the delicate balance between colour, light, and form. Through this exploration, he forged transformative images that have remained a source of inspiration for artists throughout the decades.

Curated by Ulf Küster, the exhibition brings together around 80 works (58 oil paintings and 21 watercolours) drawn from prestigious public and private collections across Europe and the United States, many of which seldom can be seen in public. It is a rare opportunity to witness Cézanne at the height of his powers: enigmatic portraits, idyllic scenes of bathers, viscerally evocative landscapes of his native Provence, and endlessly renewed depictions of his favourite motif, the Montagne Sainte-Victoire.

The exhibition opens with the mid‑1880s, a pivotal moment when Cézanne broke free from the influence of Impressionism. Rejecting the conventions of central perspective, he embarked on a radical quest: not merely to depict nature, but to analyse and reconstruct it through the language of painting. Working in his studio in southern France, he developed a method rooted in sensory perception. He translated what he saw into patches of colour (taches colorées), building form not through line but through the interplay of hue, light, and mass. This approach, both analytical and intuitive, laid the groundwork for generations of artists to come.

Central to the exhibition is Cézanne’s lifelong fascination with the Montagne Sainte‑Victoire, a Provençal landmark he painted some 30 times in oil and watercolour. The Fondation Beyeler gathers nine versions of this motif, revealing his relentless exploration of how to capture the mountain’s essence: as a living presence shaped by light and atmosphere. In these works, the mountain becomes more than a landscape: it is a laboratory for Cézanne’s formal experiments, where he tested the limits of perception and representation. Furthermore, there are numerous unfinished paintings where Cézanne left parts of the canvas bare.

Among the highlights are: two rare depictions of card players, one from the Courtauld Gallery in London and the other from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, shown side by side; La pierre à moudre au parc du Château Noir (Millstone in the Park of the Château Noir) (1892–1894), a major work from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, making its European debut; a self‑portrait (1895), unseen for decades.

Equally compelling are his scenes of bathers, in which human figures merge with their surroundings. Rather than idealising the nudity, Cézanne allowed bodies to echo the rhythm of trees, the curve of riverbanks, or the texture of earth. The result is a quiet tension: the bathers appear both present and about to dissolve into the landscape, blending classical tradition with a modern sense of form and space.

Cézanne’s still lifes offer another window into his method. Apples, pitchers, cloths — seemingly simple arrangements — become stages for investigating balance and volume. By condensing fruit into solid masses of hue and draping fabric into animated textures, he transformed everyday objects into components of a new pictorial architecture. These works reveal his quest for order, not through imitation but through a deliberate construction of visual harmony. A more sombre thread runs through his skull paintings, which stand apart from his fruit and vessel compositions. Here, the skull is not decorative but existential — a symbol of transience, rendered with the same sculptural precision as any other object. In these canvases, material reality meets reflection on mortality, adding a philosophical depth to his creation.

To deepen the encounter with Cézanne’s practice, the exhibition includes an interactive studio space where visitors can experiment with his watercolour techniques. This hands‑on element bridges historical artmaking with contemporary engagement, allowing a tactile understanding of his methods.

The show concludes with the premiere of Cézanne on Art (2025), a short film directed by contemporary painter Albert Oehlen and filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel. Inspired by conversations between Cézanne and his friend, the writer Joachim Gasquet, the film blends art, philosophy, and landscape. Shot on location at the Montagne Sainte‑Victoire and the Bibémus Quarries, it captures the light and atmosphere that so influenced Cézanne’s vision, offering a meditative coda to the exhibition.

Cézanne is more than a retrospective. It is an invitation to see how the artist transformed painting into a form of thinking. By dismantling tradition and rebuilding it through colour, light, and structure, Cézanne created a visual language that continues to resonate, proving why he remains one of modern art’s most vital voices.

Date: 25 January — 25 May 2026
Place: Fondation Beyeler, Beyeler Museum AG, Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen/Basel, Switzerland