Everyone today when we find ourselves in front of a cubist painting we immediately think ” Picasso “. It doesn’t matter if there were other Cubists, such as George Braque or Robert Delaunay. Picasso is a name and is the name par excellence of this style. But how did he get
there Who is really behind the first idea of ​​Cubism
Picasso did not invent it out of thin air, but was inspired by other painters and in particular by one: Paul Cezanne , the leading name of post-impressionism, born on January 19, 1839 and died on October 22, 1906, the one who first of all managed to dig into the essence of forms, giving it a timeless existence and discovering for the first time that even on canvas an object can be represented in all its forms, in all its faces, in all its temporality. Exemplary and therefore the wonderful painting of 1895 ” The card players “. Let’s find out together. Paul Cezanne and “The Card Players”
It was 1895 when in France , a painter named Paul Cezanne concluded ” The Card Players “, changing (unknowingly) forever the history of art. And that’s right, this simple painting testifiesone of the greatest revolutions in the artistic field . Let’s start with order.
To begin with, you need to understand the scene . Well, actually and quite simple to understand what the painter wanted to represent: they are simply two men , two gentlemen, perhaps peasants, who, seated at a bistro table , engage in a game of cards . One of the two was probably named Alexandre and was the gardener on the artist’s father’s estate in Jas de Bouffan. And so far nothing strange; a common scene of any club. But now let’s go further. The timeless simplicity
The simplicitywhich shines through looking at this scene is truly unique. There is no pathos, there is no emotionality, but only suspension. Looking closely at these two common characters we cannot help but notice that they appear to us as incredibly suspended in time . Or rather, the time here doesn’t seem to exist at all. They are neither stationary nor moving. Neither waiting nor in action. They are simply suspended in a reality that almost becomes a dream. They are playing a game without playing their cards. Everything is firm and immutable.
The scene is glossy . The precision of the environment, of the characters, of their attributes is not represented (as one would expect) by details, but by simple shapesthat make up the various objects that surround them. This is precisely the great skill of the French painter: he manages to reach the raw forms that make up the human body and the objects of the surrounding environment, excluding those significant details that would give “time” to the scene, which would become indicators of a past or a present. Cezanne digs into shapes and over time to simplify the appearance of reality : the arms are reduced to cylinders, the folds of the tablecloth into triangles, the table to a simple assembly of parallelepipeds, the bowler hats into hemispheres. Everything here seems to want to dig deep into the forms to grasp their timeless side. The canvas and the visual rhythm of color
The support of the painting has aalmost square shape and in this quadrangular space an incredible symmetry comes to life . The two men are exactly facing each other, the bottle on the table seems to become an ideal axis that divides the scene in half .
In all this, the color scheme is also of particular importance: the color is completed in an alternating rebound of tones ; the man on the right is wearing a light jacket and dark trousers, the one on the left the opposite. So here Cezanne, despite the constant stillness of the scene, manages to give it an incredible and harmonious visual rhythm.
