MoMA. Cubism - the first abstract style of modern art. The Influence of Cézanne PAUL CÉZANNE (1839-1906) 'Bibemus Quarry', 1895 (oil on canvas) Cézanne was not primarily interested in creating an illusion of depth in his painting and he abandoned the tradition of perspective drawing. Perspective, which had been used since the Early Renaissance, was a geometric formula that solved the problem of how to draw three-dimensional objects on a two dimensional surface.
Cézanne felt that the illusionism of perspective denied the fact that a painting is a flat two-dimensional object. He liked to flatten the space in his paintings to place more emphasis on their surface - to stress the difference between a painting and reality. He saw painting in more abstract terms as the construction and arrangement of colour on a two-dimensional surface. It was this flat abstract approach that appealed to the Cubists and their early paintings, such as Picasso's 'Factory at Horta de Ebbo' (1909) and Braque's 'Viaduct at L'Estaque' (1908,) took it to an extreme. Met museum. National Gallery- Picasso. Facts.