Cézanne Drawing

Best known as a painter, Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) produced some of his most radically original works on paper. MOMA’s Cézanne Drawing brings together more than 250 rarely shown works in pencil and kaleidoscopic watercolor from across the artist’s career, along with key paintings, that together reveal how drawing shaped Cézanne’s transformative modern vision.

“Drawing is merely the configuration of what you see,” Cézanne wrote, and his practice of drawing, he believed, taught him “to see well.” Encouraging such close looking, Cézanne Drawing offers the opportunity to see through Cézanne’s eyes. In their preoccupation with the passing of time, their wonder at the natural world, their investigations of the bounds of color, and their daring approach to the human figure, Cézanne’s drawings speak eloquently both to their own time and to our moment.

The exhibition website includes an article by Jodi Hauptman on “The Beauty and Life of Materiality:
on Cézanne’s Drawings” and 90 installation images.

Organized by Jodi Hauptman, Senior Curator, and Samantha Friedman, Associate Curator, with Kiko Aebi, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints.

Paul Cézanne. Bathers (Baigneurs). 1885–90. Watercolor and pencil on wove paper, 5 × 8 1/8″ (12.7 × 20.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Lillie P. Bliss Collection. Photo © 2021 MoMA, NY