"I do not just paint what I see, I paint what I feel": the post-impressionist paintings by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) turned out to be the starting points of the 20th century painting. The representatives of cubism and fauvism such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse led their art directly back to Cézanne. He was one of the first painters who consciously changed formats and perspectives in their paintings in order to achieve special effects and liveliness.

He was was born on 19 January 1839 in Aix-en-Provence in the family of a middle-class banker. Cézanne got artistic recognition very late, so most of his life he was financially dependent on his father. Continuous rejections of the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the constant rejection of the salons made him an unsociable person. When he left the education of a lawyer, which was preferred by his father, he continued his self-study in arts. His examples were Rubens, Delacroix and Poussin.He often worked and took part in mutual exhibition together with impressionists. But his style was different from that of impressionism, as he wanted to create a “strong and permanent art”. Only some special traits, like light color palette and shining colorfulness made him close to impressionism.

Cézanne painted the landscapes of the Aix-en-Provence, still lives and the scenes of the everyday life. Those made the majority of his motifs in which he wanted to represent his perception of world and nature. He developed a new conception of color, space and form, which was taken for an example by the next generations. He can be rightly called “the father of modern.”

The importance of his works was recognized only after his first individual exhibition in Paris 1895. It was followed by other exhibitions after which his paintings became demanded artworks. Later they were sold at high prices. Nevertheless, emotional state and health worsened rapidly. Even his wife and son, who both lived in Paris, could not get through to him. Cézanne died lonely from pneumonia in his studio in Aix-en-Provence on October 22, 1906.

The "myth of Cézanne" was thought up a year later in a large memorial exhibition of 56 paintings.

The style of Impressionism that emerged in French painting in 1870 owes its name to the Claude Monet's landscape 'Impression, Soleil Levant'. After initial refusal it began a true triumphant advance.

Such painters as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Auguste Renoir and others created motifs from everyday life, urban and landscape scenes in a bright, natural light.

Impressionism can be seen as a reaction to the academic painting. The emphasis was not on content with its strict rules of painting structure, but on the object as it appears at any given moment, in an often random cut out. The reality was seen in its whole color variety in natural lighting. The studio painting was replaced by the open-air painting.

The brightening of the palette and the dissolution of firm contours was accompanied by a new way of handling with color. Often, the colors were no longer mixed on the palette but side by side on the canvas so that the final impression lies in the eye of the beholder with a certain distance. In "Pointillism", (with such painters as Georges Seurat or Paul Signac) this principle was carried to the extreme.

Outside France, Impressionism was taken up by such painters as Max Slevogt, Max Liebermann and Lovis Corinth in Germany, and by James A. M. Whistler in the United States.

In sculpture, the impressionism expressed itself only conditionally. In the works of Auguste Rodin, who is considered one of the main representatives, you can see a resolution of the surfaces in which the play of light and shadow is included in the artistic expression. Degas and Renoir created sculptures as well.