In 2025, Aix-en-Provence celebrates Cezanne!

From his family estate at Mont Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cézanne spent his life drawing inspiration from his hometown and its surroundings, which became the daily stage for his artistic reflections. Throughout his career, he couldn't help but return here, as if captivated by the unique light of his countryside and the emotional ties to the land where he was born.

Nearly 120 years after the painter's passing, the city of Aix-en-Provence is celebrating these unique connections through a series of festivities. It's a wonderful opportunity to rediscover Cézanne in all his glory, both as a visionary painter and a loyal son of the Provençal land.

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An Inspiring Family Home

In light of this exceptional year of celebration, the city of Aix-en-Provence has started gradually renovating the bastide of Jas de Bouffan, a typical southern French residence purchased by the artist's father in 1859, to unveil part of it to the public. It is in this house that the painter created his first canvases at the age of 20 and where he later had his first studio, which gave birth to some of his greatest masterpieces.

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The Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, Aix-en-Provence © M. Fraisset

In 1899, the painter was obliged to part ways with the bastide, where fragments of his early works have been recently discovered, notably in the Grand Salon. During these 40 years of creation on the 15 hectares of land and vineyards of the property, still lifes, card players, bathers, and portraits were born, which can be explored at the Granet Museum starting next summer.

An international exhibition at the Granet Museum

Indeed, from June 28 to October 12, 2025, the cultural institution in Aix will host a major exhibition to highlight the works from the Jas de Bouffan, but that’s not all! In total, the museum has gathered over 100 paintings from the...the whole world, to showcase all the complexity and full extent of Paul Cezanne's talent. Oil paintings, drawings, and watercolors will connect with his restored bastide.

Paul Cézanne, The Card Players, between 1890 and 1895, Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Bequest of Count Isaac de Camondo, 1911 © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

Visitors will have the chance to stroll through the gardens of the family estate – where some of the artist’s viewpoints will be visible – to the museum galleries, to discover canvases from the greatest collections in France and around the world: Basel, Chicago, Harvard, London, Los Angeles, New York, Ottawa, Prague, Tokyo, and Zurich. Throughout the sections will appear works created at Jas de Bouffan, featuring its inhabitants, landscapes, and buildings.

Following in the footsteps of Paul Cezanne

This exceptional year 2025 will also be marked by the presentation...A public presentation of a new space entirely dedicated to the painter. It will bring together his studio on the hill of Lauves, where the artist settled in 1902 and spent the end of his life, and a surrounding area acquired by Aix-en-Provence in 2016. A unique journey into the painter's world thanks to the studio left intact and the restored objects of Cezanne that can be admired there.

Interior of Cezanne's studio on the Lauves hill in Aix-en-Provence © JC Carbonne, City of Aix-en-Provence, Sophie Spiteri

Last big event of this year's unique nature, the creation of a new pathway for the public leading to the quarries of Bibémus. A place deeply connected to Cezanne, located on the road between the city center and the Sainte-Victoire mountain, which will allow visitors to immerse themselves in the artist's world and better understand his sources of inspiration. Indeed, being there, it’s impossible not to think about the geometrization of landscapes that began to emerge in his work from the 1890s, establishing Paul Cezanne as the "Father of modern art."