Paul Cézanne had to wait longer for recognition than all his fellow artists, year after year he unsuccessfully sent paintings to the official Salon, endured criticism, defending the right to be himself. The son of a miser banker, he was forced to exist in miserable poverty on a meager allowance and for many years was afraid to admit to his father that he had a wife and son, and having received a large inheritance, he did not betray himself. Always overgrown and shaggy, in shabby clothes, he lived as a recluse, hated it when people touched him, managed to turn everyone against him and seemed to feel good only by saying nasty things to others. If he failed to convey the essence of what was being depicted on canvas, he would growl like an animal, break brushes and tear apart unfinished canvases, and could throw them outside to get wet in the rain and fade in the sun. Since childhood, Cézanne was friends with his fellow countryman Emile Zola, and he portrayed him in the novel “Creativity” as a psychopath and a total loser. A great teller of truth, he rashly broke with friends, neglected love and stubbornly moved forward along the once and for all chosen path: he knew that he was creating a new painting. With the strokes of his brush, Cezanne seemed to thicken space, bend it in landscapes and open new horizons for avant-garde painting.