In the second half of the 19th century, in the lush countryside near Aix-en-Provence, Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) was feverishly working with his brush, creating landscapes and still lifes that would become landmarks of modern art. With solid, intense soft brushstrokes and bold new approaches to light and space, he mediated from Impressionism to the defining trends of the 20th century and became, in the words of Matisse and Picasso, “the father of us all.” This fresh introduction to the artist selects key works from Cézanne's entire oeuvre to understand his development, innovations, and crucial influence on contemporary art. From compositions of fruits and pears to scenes of bathers in the countryside, we watch how he experimented with color, perspective, and texture to render “a harmony parallel to Nature,” as well as the process of observation and recording. Meanwhile, we discover Cézanne's famous Card Players, the layering of warm and cool hues to build form and surface, and the geometric rigor of his landscapes from the Aix-en-Provence area, bright with the light of southern France and bold with a radically new rendering of dimensions and depth.