Since his family bastide to the Sainte-Victoire mountain, Paul Cezanne spent his life draw inspiration from your hometown and its surroundingswhich became the daily theater of his artistic reflections. Throughout his career, he never stopped returning to it, as magnetized by the special light of its countryside and the emotional charge of a country where he was born.
Next to 120 years after the painter’s deaththe city of Aix-en-Provence returns to these unique linksthrough a series of celebrations. The opportunity to rediscover Cezanne in all his facets, both as a visionary painter and a faithful son of the Provençal land.
An inspiring family home
In view of this exceptional year of celebrationthe city of Aix-en-Provence has undertaken to gradually renovate the bastide of Jas de Bouffantypical residence in the south of France acquired by the artist’s father in 1859in order to reveal part of it to the public. It is in this house that the painter will create his first paintings at the age of 20and that he will subsequently have his first workshop, who will see the birth some of his greatest masterpieces.
The Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, Aix-en-Provence © M. Fraisset
In 1899the painter is forced to part with the bastide, in which were still recently discovered fragments of his early workparticularly in the Grand Salon. Death 40 years of creation in the middle of 15 hectares of land and vines of property will be born still lifes, card players, bathers, portraits and self-portraitsto be discovered at the Granet museum from next summer.
An international exhibition at the Granet museum
Indeed, from June 28 to October 12, 2025the Aix cultural institution will offer a major exhibition to highlight the paintings from Jas de Bouffanbut not only. In total, the museum has collected more than 100 paintings from all over the world, to illustrate all the complexity et the whole extent of talent of Paul Cezanne. Oils on canvas, drawings and watercolors will do so the link with its restored bastide.
Paul Cezanne, The Card Playersbetween 1890 and 1895, Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Bequest Count Isaac de Camondo, 1911 © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
Visitors will have the chance to pass from the gardens of the family home – where certain points of view of the artist will be visible – to museum roomsto discover paintings from the greatest collections in France and the world : Basel, Chicago, Harvard, London, Los Angeles, New York, Ottawa, Prague, Tokyo and Zurich. Throughout the sections will appear the works produced at Jas de Bouffanrepresenting its habitants, ses lands and his buildings.
In the footsteps of Paul Cezanne
This exceptional year 2025 will also be marked by the presentation to the public of a new space entirely dedicated to the painter. It will group his workshop on Lauves hill, where the artist settles in 1902 and in which he will spend the end of his life, and a neighboring land acquired by Aix-en-Provence in 2016. A unique journey into the painter’s universe thanks to the workshop left intact, and the restored objects by Cezanne that can be admired there.
Interior of Cézanne’s studio on the Lauves hill in Aix-en-Provence © JC Carbonne, City of Aix-en-Provence, Sophie Spiteri
Last big event this year like no other, the creation of a new route for the public leading to Bibémus quarries. A place highly Cezannian, located on the road between the city center and Sainte-Victoire mountainwhich will allow visitors to immerse yourself in the artist’s world and to better understand ses sources d’inspiration. Indeed, on site, it is impossible not to think of the geometrization of landscapes which operates in his work from the 1890s, and will make Paul Cezanne the “Father of modern art”.
Cezanne 2025
Aix-en-Provence
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