site / non-site CÉZANNE site / non-site Guillermo Solana Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid February 4 – May 18, 2014 Fundación Colección Acknowledgements Thyssen-Bornemisza Board of Trustees President The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Hervé Irien José Ignacio Wert Ortega wishes to thank the following people Philipp Kaiser who have contributed decisively with Samuel Keller Vice-President their collaboration to making this Brian Kennedy Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza exhibition a reality: Udo Kittelmann Board Members María Alonso Perrine Le Blan HRH the Infanta Doña Pilar de Irina Antonova Ellen Lee Borbón Richard Armstrong Arnold L. Lehman José María Lassalle Ruiz László Baán Christophe Leribault Fernando Benzo Sáinz Mr. and Mrs. Barron U. Kidd Marina Loshak Marta Fernández Currás Graham W. J. Beal Glenn D. Lowry HIRH Archduchess Francesca von Christoph Becker Akiko Mabuchi Habsburg-Lothringen Jean-Yves Marin Miguel Klingenberg Richard Benefield Fred Bidwell Marc Mayer Miguel Satrústegui Gil-Delgado Mary G. Morton Isidre Fainé Casas Daniel Birnbaum Nathalie Bondil Pia Müller-Tamm Rodrigo de Rato y Figaredo Isabella Nilsson María de Corral López-Dóriga Michael Brand Thomas P. Campbell Nils Ohlsen Artistic Director Michael Clarke Eriko Osaka Guillermo Solana Caroline Collier Nicholas Penny Marcus Dekiert Ann Philbin Managing Director Lionel Pissarro Evelio Acevedo Philipp Demandt Jean Edmonson Christine Poullain Secretary Bernard Fibicher Earl A. Powell III Carmen Castañón Jiménez Gerhard Finckh HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco Giancarlo Forestieri William Robinson Honorary Director Marsha Rojas Tomàs Llorens David Franklin Matthias Frehner Alejandra Rossetti Peter Frei Katy Rothkopf Isabel García-Comas Klaus Albrecht Schröder María García Yelo Dieter Schwarz Léonard Gianadda Sir Nicholas Serota Karin van Gilst Esperanza Sobrino Belén Giráldez Nancy Spector Claudine Godts Maija Tanninen-Mattila Ann Goldstein Baroness Thyssen-Bornemisza Michael Govan Charles L. Venable Louis Grachos Aurora Zubillaga Annette Haudiquet Grant Holcomb Max Hollein And other collectors who have Agnes Husslein-Arco preferred to remain anonymous. 4 Lenders AUSTRALIA JAPAN UNITED KINGDOM Sydney Tokyo Edinburgh Art Gallery of New South Wales The National Museum of Western Art Scottish National Gallery Yokohama London AUSTRIA Yokohama Museum of Art Tate Vienna The National Gallery Albertina Museum NETHERLANDS Österreichische Galerie Belvedere Amsterdam UNITED STATES Stedelijk Museum Buffalo CANADA NORWAY Albright-Knox Art Gallery Montreal Oslo Cleveland The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts The Cleveland Museum of Art Ottawa The National Museum of Art, National Gallery of Canada Architecture and Design Dallas PRINCIPALITY OF MONACO Mr. and Mrs. Barron U. Kidd FINLAND Montecarlo Detroit Helsinki Collection du Palais Princier Detroit Institute of Arts Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish Indianapolis National Gallery RUSSIA Indianapolis Museum of Art Moscow Los Angeles FRANCE The State Pushkin Museum of Le Havre Hammer Museum Fine Arts Los Angeles County Museum of Art Musée d’art moderne André Malraux SPAIN New York Marseille Madrid Brooklyn Museum Musée Cantini Colección Carmen Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum GERMANY Thyssen-Bornemisza The Metropolitan Museum of Art MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Berlin SWEDEN Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Göteborg Rochester Nationalgalerie Göteborgs Konstmuseum Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester Cologne Stockholm Museum Ludwig Moderna Museet San Francisco Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Fondation Corboud SWITZERLAND Toledo Fondation Socindec Frankfurt am Main Toledo Museum of Art Städel Museum Basel Washington DC Fondation Beyeler. Riehen/Basel, National Gallery of Art Karlsruhe Beyeler Collection Staatliche Kunsthalle Berne Wuppertal Kunstmuseum Bern Von der Heydt-Museum Geneva HUNGARY Musées d’art et d’histoire Budapest Lausanne Szépmüvészeti Múzeum Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Winterthur ITALY Volkart Foundation Parma Zurich Fondazione Magnani Rocca Kunsthaus Zürich 5 6 This spring the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is pleased to present a monographic exhibition devoted to Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), a fundamental figure in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century painting who is regarded as the father of modern art. This is the first exhibition of the artist’s work to be held in Spain in the past thirty years since the retrospective staged in 1984 by the Museo Estatal de Arte Contemporáneo (from which today’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía originates). The exhibition now on display is curated by Guillermo Solana, artistic director of the Museum, with Paula Luengo as technical curator. Taking us through different sections—Portrait of an Unknown Man, The Bend in the Road, Nudes and Trees, The Phantom of Sainte-Victoire and Construction Game—Cézanne Site/Non-site explores the relationship between the two genres which the master of Aix-en- Provence cultivated with the same passion: landscapes and still lifes. Although Cézanne, following the example of his Impressionist contemporaries, painted his landscapes outdoors, the nature motifs he depicts are arranged into a sort of mise-en-scène, revealing compositions that are not impressions subject to seasonal and temporal changes. Furthermore, in an interplay of reciprocal influences, this painter’s still lifes incorporate the changes and tensions of nature itself. The exhibition relies on the invaluable contribution of many institutions and private collections from all over the world which have generously lent their works. Our most heartfelt thanks to them all for making it possible to bring such an ambitious project to fruition and for giving the people who live in Spain or travel to Madrid the pleasure of viewing this group of landscapes, still lifes, portraits and scenes of bathers, which is all the more outstanding owing to the difficulty of bringing them together in this day and age. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, C ULTURE AND SPORT 7 Exhibition Catalogue Curator Published by Guillermo Solana Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Technical Curator Tex t Paula Luengo Guillermo Solana Editorial Coordination Registrar Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Purificación Ripio Publications Department Installation, Production and Ana Cela Promotion Catali Garrigues Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Ángela Villaverde Edition Graphic Design, Signage and Erica Witschey Installation Design Carlos Serrano GAH Translation Jenny Dodman Graphic Design This exhibition is largely covered Carlos Serrano GAH by the Spanish Government Ricardo Serrano García / Diseño AM3 Indemnity Scheme. Prepress Lucam Printing TF Artes Gráficas Binding Ramos © of the edition: Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2014 © of the text: its author © of the photographs: see illustration credits © Émile Bernard, André Derain, André Lhote, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Maurice Denis, VEGAP, Madrid, 2014 ISBN: 978-84-15113-50-8 Legal deposit: M-1473-2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, in whole or in part, nor utilized in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written consent of the Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza. The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza has made every effort to locate the copyright holders of all the graphic material reproduced herein. We apologize to all those whom it has been impossible to contact. [Back cover: cat. 60, detail] 8 Contents CÉZANNE Site/Non-site Guillermo Solana 11 1. RUINS OF THE LANDSCAPE 31 2. PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN MAN 41 3. THE BEND IN THE ROAD 69 4. NUDES AND TREES 103 5. THE PHANTOM OF SAINTE-VICTOIRE 135 6. CONSTRUCTION GAME 169 CHRONOLOGY Paula Luengo Note The reader will find that the captions of Paul Cézanne’s catalogued works include a number preceded by the letter R. In the case of oil paintings, this refers to the number under which the work is listed in John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne. A Catalogue Raisonné (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996). For watercolors, see John Rewald, Paul Cézanne: The Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné by John Rewald (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983). CABECERA GUILLERMO SOLANA C ÉZANNE Site/Non-site For María 1. RUINS OF THE LANDSCAPE “Nature speaks to everyone. And yet, no one has ever painted the landscape.” Cézanne according to Gasquet1 “With Cézanne landscape itself comes to an end,” wrote Robert Motherwell in 1944, with that very modern fondness for certifying the death of a tradition. I cannot help imagining Cézanne looking at Sainte-Victoire and unwittingly painting the last landscape in History. But Motherwell’s words are somewhat ambiguous. Does he mean that Cézanne destroyed (consciously or otherwise) landscape painting? Or did that responsibility fall to those who came after him? Whatever the case, the idea of the end of landscape would have surprised Cézanne, as he believed that the history of landscape had not even begun. 1. “La nature parle à tous. Eh bien! Jamais on n’a peint le paysage.” Joachim Gasquet, Cézanne (Fougères: Encre marine, 2002), p. 258. Paul Cézanne L’Estaque: Pines and Sea, 1883–85 (detail) [cat. 27] 11 GUILLERMO SOLANA Motherwell’s whole sentence takes us beyond Cézanne to the heart of twen- tieth-century Art History: “With Cézanne landscape itself comes to an end, and from him to the Cubists the emphasis is changed: the subject becomes ‘neutral.’ Now certain painters wish to be called non-figurative […].”2 Landscape painting was thus not the only genre that perished; all