Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Paul Cézanne (January 19, 1839 – October 22, 1906) was a French artist, a painter (Postimpressionist) whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th Century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th Century Impressionism and the early 20th Century's most startling new line of artistic enquiry, namely Cubism. The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cézanne "...is the father of us all..." cannot be easily refuted.

Paul Cézanne's work demonstrates a mastery of design, colour, composition and draftsmanship. His often repetitive, sensitive, tentative, delicate and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and instantly recognisable, almost as clearly recognisable as handwriting. Using planes of colour and small repeated brushstokes that build up to form complex fields at once a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye, and an abstraction from observed nature, Cézanne's paintings convey intense study of his subjects, a repeated and searching gaze, and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.