Paul Cezanne (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)

In this volume of the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series written and illustrated by Mike Venezia, we learn about the life and work of Paul Cezanne, who was apparently the moodiest of the great Impressionist artists. Venezia uses examples of Cezanne's works and his own cartoons to show the artist's views on art. However, when Venezia claims that the other great impressionist artists of the day felt that Cezanne may have been the greatest of them all, I have to admit the reasons why they would think that are not at all clear to me. Venezia contends that Cezanne's artwork "influence almost every modern artist who came after him."... I understand that Cezanne paid as much attention to the backgrounds and the space around objects as he did to his main subjects, and that he wanted to show how he felt about nature and not just depict nature as it looked, but none of this seems particularly monumental to me. Maybe it has more to do with the multiple perspectives he used in the same painting or the way he created depth without using a lot of perspective, but Venezia does not tie the evidence together with his argument. I think he needed to spend just a little bit of time talking about specific influences that can be traced from Cezanne to some of the artists that followed him to prove his case. However, although this is the least impressive volume in this series that I have seen to date that is certainly a relative claim. The Getting to Know the World's Great Artists books are an excellent introduction for young students to the world of art. Reading all of these books is like taking an Art Appreciation course (and having fun while doing it too).