Exhibition Review: “Cezanne” at the Fondation Beyeler

The new Resident Evil just dropped, and while the reviews are praising its gameplay, for me, these games always embody the feeling of absorbing a quiet life. Of course, most of your time will be spent exploring the post-apocalyptic landscape with a gun as you try to avoid zombies, but the main task is not to fight them. Instead, it picks up piece after piece of hand-sized material and rotates it as you search for keys and indicators. This might include a cup, a rotten apple, a note from a regretful scientist, a vase of flowers. All of this torn ephemera is rendered with state-of-the-art imaging technology as you rotate it under an inexplicable light source and admire its almost surreal art style.

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was a person who made great advances in painting techniques, so much so that Pablo Picasso called him “the father of us all.” His work is currently the subject of a blockbuster exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler near Basel that gathers around 80 paintings from his latest work: 58 oil paintings and 21 watercolors from institutional and private collections in Switzerland, France, Germany, England, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United States. Although many come from sources such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum and the Musée d’Orsay, more than half come from private collections and are rarely seen in public.

Here are 14 of the artist’s favorites, incl Apples and oranges (c.1899). This is a bounty drawing. At least a dozen pieces of fruit cover a clean tablecloth in such an unusual quantity and shape that it looks like they might be crowded on the table. It’s hard to tell if their colors are coming from the skin, the room light or the ambient light from another fruit nearby. Each ball of pigment is created with such care, each boasting a defined border that separates it from the world, that you begin to feel that they have their own personality. Cézanne worked less and apparently preferred apples to other fruits because they took longer to spoil.

This may be a personal favorite, but the exhibition also includes a number of his famous works of art, including Card Players (1893-1896). The strange thing about these guys is that even though they are always fighting, they seem to fold their hands like fruit. Behind them, a tavern rolls over. Perhaps that’s where all the tension went, it’s the background where Cézanne’s signature patchwork strikes.

Bathing Club (c.1895) would be a combination of the two previously described works. Here, the freed background attracts green, blue and teal, the buttocks of the swimmers are given the same level of visibility of chaotic characters as the fruit in the first work described. All three are masters in a show that seems to be filled with them.

“Cezanne“ is on view at the Fondation Beyeler until May 25, 2026.

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