Paul Cezanne Quotes & Sayings

Right now a moment of time is passing by! ... We must become that moment. — Paul Cezanne

Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life? — Paul Cezanne

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution. — Paul Cezanne

My age and health will never allow me to realize the dream of art I've been pursuing all my life. — Paul Cezanne

One had to immerse oneself in one's surroundings and intensely study nature or one's subject to understand how to recreate it. — Paul Cezanne

I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature. — Paul Cezanne

One must see one's model correctly and experience it in the right way; and furthermore express oneself forcibly and with distinction. — Paul Cezanne

We live in a rainbow of chaos. — Paul Cezanne

When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also. — Paul Cezanne

I am not altogether displeased with the shirt-front. — Paul Cezanne

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors. — Paul Cezanne

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations. — Paul Cezanne

All my compatriots are asses compared to me. — Paul Cezanne

Perhaps I was born too early. I was more the painter of your generation than of mine. — Paul Cezanne

It is not about painting life, it is about making painting alive. — Paul Cezanne

It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas. — Paul Cezanne

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else - by color. — Paul Cezanne

A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I'm every inch a painter. — Paul Cezanne

Here on the edge of the river, the motifs are very plentiful, the same subject seen from a different angle gives a subject for study of the highest interest and so varied that I think I could be occupied for months without changing my place, simply bending a little more to the right or left. — Paul Cezanne

Talks on art are almost useless. The work which goes to bring progress in one's own subject is sufficient compensation for the incomprehension of imbeciles. — Paul Cezanne

It is necessary to introduce light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, and a sufficient amount of blues, to obtain an airy feeling. — Paul Cezanne

I paint as if I were Rothschild. — Paul Cezanne

When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one! — Paul Cezanne

If I think, I am lost. — Paul Cezanne

May I repeat what I told you here: treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything brought into proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth ... lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need to introduce into our light vibrations, represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blueness to give the feel of air. — Paul Cezanne

Art is a harmony parallel with nature — Paul Cezanne

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link. — Paul Cezanne

You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well. — Paul Cezanne

I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion. — Paul Cezanne

The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it. — Paul Cezanne

I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell it to you. — Paul Cezanne

There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other. — Paul Cezanne

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. — Paul Cezanne

Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre. — Paul Cezanne

Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls below the niveau of his great rival. — Paul Cezanne

I'll always be grateful to the public of intelligent amateurs. — Paul Cezanne

Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left. — Paul Cezanne

Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate ... Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time. — Paul Cezanne

I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools ... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing. — Paul Cezanne

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read. — Paul Cezanne

Art first of all is optical. That's where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think. — Paul Cezanne

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't. — Paul Cezanne

People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day. — Paul Cezanne

Yes, a bunch of carrots, observed directly, painted simply in the personal way one sees it, worth more than the Ecole's everlasting slices of buttered bread, that tobacco-juice painting, slavishly done by the book? The day is coming when a single original carrot will give birth to a revolution. — Paul Cezanne

There is no light painting or dark painting, but simply relations of tones. — Paul Cezanne

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience. — Paul Cezanne

Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color is at it's richest, form is at its fullest. — Paul Cezanne

What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious, it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the implacable source of sensations. — Paul Cezanne

Studying the model and realizing it is sometimes very slow in coming for the artist. — Paul Cezanne

Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye! — Paul Cezanne

I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine ... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed ... I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin ... — Paul Cezanne

Surely, a single bunch of carrots painted naively, just as we personally see it, is worth all the endless banalities of the Schools, all those dreary pictures concocted out of tobacco juice according to time-honored formulas? — Paul Cezanne

The strong experience of nature ... is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of all future work. — Paul Cezanne

I have sworn to die painting. — Paul Cezanne

I allow no one to touch me. — Paul Cezanne

My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me. — Paul Cezanne

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest. — Paul Cezanne

Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see. — Paul Cezanne

I am the primitive of the method I have invented. — Paul Cezanne

I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration. — Paul Cezanne

I wish to die painting. — Paul Cezanne

Everything is about to disappear. You've got to hurry up if you still want to see things. — Paul Cezanne

I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature. — Paul Cezanne

It's not just about looking and copying, it's about feeling too — Paul Cezanne

The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture ... we merge in an iridescent chaos. — Paul Cezanne

Fruits ... like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen. — Paul Cezanne

I advance all of my canvas at one time. — Paul Cezanne

Tell me, do you think I'm going mad? I sometimes wonder, you know. — Paul Cezanne

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured. — Paul Cezanne

An optical impression is produced on our organs of sight which makes us classify as light, half-tone or quartertone, the surfaces represented by colour sensations. So that light does not exist for the painter. — Paul Cezanne

To paint is not to copy the object slavishly, it is to grasp a harmony among many relationships. — Paul Cezanne

Chatter about art is almost always useless. — Paul Cezanne

If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul. — Paul Cezanne

Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible. — Paul Cezanne

You have no idea how life-giving it is to find around one a youth that agrees not to bury one on the spot. — Paul Cezanne

Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. — Paul Cezanne

My nervous system is very much weakened - nothing but painting in oil can keep me going. — Paul Cezanne

I am still searching for the expression of those confused sensations that we bring with us at birth. — Paul Cezanne

To achieve progress nature alone counts, and the eye is trained through contact with her. It becomes concentric by looking and working. — Paul Cezanne

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals. — Paul Cezanne

Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. — Paul Cezanne

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain. — Paul Cezanne

All the theories mess you up inside. — Paul Cezanne

I am a pupil of Pissarro. — Paul Cezanne

The world doesn't understand me and I don't understand the world, that's why I've withdrawn from it. — Paul Cezanne

In order to make progress, there is only nature, and the eye is turned through contact with her. — Paul Cezanne

Sometimes I imagine colors as if they were living ideas, being of pure reason with which to communicate. Nature is not on the surface, it is deep down. — Paul Cezanne

The transposition that a painter makes with an original vision gives to the representation of nature a new interest. — Paul Cezanne

The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one's own strength makes one modest. — Paul Cezanne

Everything in nature is formed upon the sphere, the cone and the cylinder. One must learn to paint these simple figures and then one can do all that he may wish. — Paul Cezanne

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations. — Paul Cezanne

I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting. — Paul Cezanne

The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings. — Paul Cezanne

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation. — Paul Cezanne

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature. — Paul Cezanne

I should have wished to possess the intellectual equilibrium that characterizes you and permits you to achieve without fail the desired end ... Chance has not favoured me with an equal self-assurance, it is the only regret I have about things of this earth. — Paul Cezanne

It is impossible for emotion not to come on us in thinking of that time now flowed away. — Paul Cezanne

The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality. — Paul Cezanne

Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world. — Paul Cezanne

Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity. — Paul Cezanne