La Montagne Sainte-Victoire 1887

Paul Cézanne’s “La Montagne Sainte-Victoire” presents us with a landscape rendered through a mosaic of colour and form, capturing the essence of the French countryside. The composition is structured by the interplay of horizontal planes and the vertical assertion of the foreground tree. Cézanne destabilizes traditional perspective, opting instead for a construction of space through colour modulation and geometric simplification. Each brushstroke functions as a building block, contributing to the overall structure of the painting. The mountain, a recurring motif in Cézanne's work, is not merely depicted but reconstructed, reflecting a move towards abstraction. Cézanne’s formal innovations paved the way for Cubism and subsequent movements. His focus on structure and form over conventional representation challenges our understanding of perception, questioning the very nature of seeing. By reducing the landscape to its essential components, Cézanne invites us to reconsider how we interpret and construct reality through art.