The eternal contemporary. We went there, here are our pictures:

In Père Tanguy's shop in Montmartre, a few canvases signed by Cézanne lay dormant at the end of the 1880s. The painter, retired to Aix-en-Provence, no longer sought to exhibit. Gauguin, and soon Matisse, stopped there and recognized in this formal radicalism a path for themselves, already turned towards a purer art, on the way to abstraction. After Cézanne's death, the Salon d'Automne established him as a major figure of modernity. His formula, “art is a harmony parallel to nature”, became the compass for an entire generation that questioned the relationship between painting and reality. The avant-gardes of the 20th century seized upon it. Picasso himself would recognize in Cézanne “the father of us all.”

A few pivotal works recur like refrains in his successors. Mont Sainte-Victoire, painted more than sixty times, The Card Players and The Bathers served as a matrix for the following century. The Cubists found their grammar there, the abstract artists their authorization, the contemporary artists their return to landscape. Mondrian pushed it toward the grid. Joan Mitchell finds it in matter. Bridget Riley explores it in geometry. Peter Doig brings it back to landscape.

The Grand Palais presents a unique genealogy. 180 works, including 70 by the master, trace a multi-voiced history, made up of admiration and demands, of lineages and disagreements. One hundred and thirty years after Père Tanguy, modern art rediscovers its father.

DID YOU KNOW?

Have you noticed that Cézanne's name doesn't have an accent? The painter himself never signed it any other way. This accent is said to have been added in 1886, to conform to Parisian usage, to facilitate correct pronunciation.

GRAND PALAIS
From September 23, 2026 to January 17, 2027
17 Avenue du Général Eisenhower, 75008 Paris
Metro: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Lines 1 & 9)
Tue-Sun 10am-7:30pm, Fri until 10pm
Closed on Mon - Price: €19
Reduced price: €16 - Free for under 18s