Cezanne was pretty abstract but still representational
Cubism was still representational but borrowed heavily from Cezanne and I frankly don't care for cubism
abstraction as we know it around 1910/11
One of my favorite artists is frantisek kupka
His among others work was coined orphism and was the accepted first break from reality into complete abstraction

But did Cezanne steal from someone
Was Cezanne the first to be accepted as working in that style while pulling it off somewhat successfully
I would put money on it. Did Picasso invent cubism or did he see something in somones work somewhere that had that look to it but was still yet in that artist n its infancy and unacknowledgeable.
So while one artist is exploring an idea which borrowed from something else here is Picasso at first glance diving directly into that cubist language and developing it while the other guy is wrestling with where his work is taking him


I think its a disservice to art to deny the evolution of it and instead try and determine who came up with what

That's like giving the guy who first put ketchup on a hamburger credit as the man who invented the modern hamburger
He just slightly altered something that already existed
And someone else in all likely hood beat him to it by 3 years only they weren't noticed and he got the idea from a grandmother in carolina anyway who served patties in a tomato sauce and saw little kids spooning some onto slices of bread

Egg 1st
Is a hamburger a hamburger
North america was pretty well discovered before any European ship drifted ashore
What counts and what doesnt