Le Cézanne d’André Breton

Cézanne as seen by André Breton. In the footstep of Dada and against cubism, surrealists, and particularly André Breton, take Cézanne as an example to condemn a unilateral vision of painting founded on classical views. Cézanne being turned into a classical artist by critics in a specific political context, plus the claims of cubist artists, compelled Breton to go by his own artistic rules and to condemn Cézanne. But in the single example of a text devoted to Cézanne in 1937 in L'Amour fou he considers the specificity of reassessing Cezanne’s painting, in particular by using the concept of the “halo” so dear to himself. In this text, he gives way to a very personal view of Cezanne’s painting, but also to esthetic lines close to the surrealist questionings that, for militant reasons, he will stop developing.