University of Delaware Office of Public Relations The Messenger Vol. 5, No. 4/1996 Researching Cezanne's world While thousands of people flocked to the Philadelphia Museum of Art this summer to view the only U.S. stop of a stunning exhibition of works by Paul Cezanne, Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, UD professor of art history, was journeying back in time to research Cezanne's world in Paris and Aix-en-Provence where he lived and worked. Her end result will be a book on the artist, Cezanne and the Land: Regionalism and Modernity in Late 19th-century France, scheduled for publication by the Princeton University Press in 1998. Athanassoglou-Kallmyer became keenly interested in the artist after seeing a Cezanne exhibition in 1990 at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Asked to participate in a panel discussion by the gallery's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, she discovered that her concept of Cezanne and his relationships with society differed from those held by other scholars. "Cezanne commonly has been portrayed as somewhat isolated from the social and cultural milieu of his day, but my research has shown the opposite is true. He was connected to and aware of the intellectual, social and artistic movements of the late 19th century. He knew poets, writers, artists and politicians. "In my research, I am trying to reconstruct the cultural and social background of his life, which illuminates his paintings in a different way," Athanassoglou-Kallmyer explains. Born in 1839, Cezanne studied painting with a local artist before going to Paris, where he knew and exhibited with the Impressionists, such as Manet and Pisarro. As he matured, he moved away from Impressionism, evolving a style of his own, with emphasis on structure and form, influencing other artists, including Picasso and those in the Cubist movement. He returned to Provence and continued painting landscapes, portraits and still-lifes until his death in 1906. This past winter, in spite of a general strike in Paris that crippled public transportation and other public services, Athanassoglou-Kallmyer carried out her research, walking miles to do so. This summer, she continued her work there, traveling to Aix-en-Provence to visit the artist's studio and home and the sites of his paintings and conducting further research in local archives. To carry out her current research, she received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for a two-year sabbatical leave from the University. Only 158 scholars, artists and scientists received Guggenheim awards this year, from 2,791 applicants nationwide. The awards are based on "unusually distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment." Athanassoglou-Kallmyer was in Philadelphia in early June to participate in a three-day international symposium, "The Art and Influence of Paul Cezanne," held at the Museum of Art in conjunction with its exhibit. More than 20 scholars from around the world, including art specialists from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, took part in the symposium, and gave different perspectives on the artist and his times. Athanassoglou-Kallmyer's topic was "Cezanne's Land: Ideology and the End of Time," an interpretation of how the artist's landscapes reflect the timelessness, as well as the history, of his native Provence. -Sue Swyers Moncure