Ferdinand Hodler, 'Le Promeneur dans la forêt' (Walker in the forest), 1885
Fondation for Art, Culture and History, Winterthur SIK-ISEA, Zurich
SIK-ISEA (Markus Küffner)
Ferdinand Hodler: 'La Nuit' (The Night), 1889-1890, The Kunstmuseum Bern
Kunstmuseum Bern
Ferdinand Hodler: 'Le Garçon enchanté' (The Enchanted Boy), 1894, Museum of Art and History in Geneva
Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève
Ferdinand Hodler, 'Autoportrait' (self portrait), 1914, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen
Kunsthaus, Zürich
Ferdinand Hodler, 'La Vérité' (The Truth), 1903, Kunsthaus, Zurich
Kunsthaus, Zürich
Ferdinand Hodler, 'Le Lac Léman vu de Chexbres' (Lake Geneva viewed from Chexbres) 1904, Museum of Art and History in Geneva, photo: Y. Siza
Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève
Ferdinand Hodler, 'Le Lac de Thoune aux reflets symétriques' (Lake Thun with symmetric reflections), 1905, Museum of Art and History in Geneva
Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève
Ferdinand Hodler, 'Le Désir' (The Desire), 1908, Museum of Art and History in Geneva, photo: B. Jacot-Descombes
Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève, photo : B. Jacot-Descombes
Ferdinand Hodler, 'Le Lac de Thoune et le Niesen' (Lake Thun and the Niesen), 1910, The Barrett Collection -Dallas, Texas, photo: Kevin Todora
Todora Photography LLC
Ferdinand Hodler, 'Portrait de Valentine Godé-Darel malade' (Portrait of sick Valentine Godé-Darel), 1914, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Fondation Dübi-Müller, SIK-ISEA, Zurich
SIK-ISEA, Zurich
On May 19, 1918, Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler passed away in his lakeside apartment in Geneva. A major new exhibition celebrates the work and aesthetic ideals of one of Switzerland’s greatest artists from his later “Parallelism” period.
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Born in London, Simon is a multimedia journalist who has worked for www.swissinfo.ch since 2006. He speaks French, German and Spanish and focuses on science, technology and innovation issues.
Born in England, I've lived in Switzerland since 1994. I trained as a graphic designer in Zurich between 1997 – 2002. More recently I have moved on to work as photo editor and joined the team at swissinfo.ch in March 2017.
To mark the centenary of the Swiss artist’s death, the Museum of Art and History in Geneva has joined forces with Bern’s Kunstmuseum to show 100 of his works from 1890 onwards. The Hodler/Parallelism’ exhibitionExternal link, which runs from April 20 to August 19 in Geneva, will later move to Bern from September 14 until January 13, 2019.
“Our challenge with this exhibition was to find a new angle,” Jean-Yves Marin, the Geneva museum director, told reporters on Thursday. Since the beginning of 2000s, Hodler has been the focus of major exhibitions, including those in Switzerland in 2003, 2006, 2008 and 2011, and in Paris in 2007.
“When you ask people in Geneva about Hodler some say he was a landscape artist, others describe him as a portrait painter, while others will say he’s a painter of historic scenes. But he was all that and much more,” said Marin.
Poor upbringing
Hodler was born in a poor district of the Swiss capital, Bern, in 1853. At the age of 14, having lost both his parents, he began work in an artists’ studio in Thun which produced pictures for tourists. When he was 18 he moved to Geneva and attended the Academy of Art, where he received a classical training and spent much of his life.
By the end of his life he had produced over 2,200 paintings, thousands of sketches, and was considered one of Switzerland’s leading artists.
His early works were mostly realistic portraits and landscapes, drawing inspiration from the Bernese Oberland, and lakes Thun and Geneva. He developed a unique approach to landscape painting through his knowledge of nature, mineralogy and geology, which he studied at university, and by making thousands of sketches, which he then developed in his studio using his memory and imagination.
Towards the end of the 19th century, his work evolved to combine influences such as symbolism and art nouveau styles. He explored nature and themes such as love, death, faith and hope.
Symmetry, order and unity
Hodler called his simple new style “parallelism”, with compositions that sought to reflect the symmetry, order, rhythms and unity he felt were inherent in nature.
From 1900, his work developed further taking on an expressionist style with strong colours and geometrical figures. Towards the end of his life he returned to his favourite subjects: mountain and lake landscapes, and women.
Hodler was in close touch with the artistic upheavals of his time. He also won numerous awards for his paintings, including a gold medal at the 1900 World Fair in Paris. For many years his historical paintings and reputation as a patriotic painter obscured the leading role he played in the transition of European art from the 19th century to modernism.
“The difficulty with this exhibition is that everyone knows everything about Hodler, so we had to renew our view of the artist,” said exhibition curator Laurence Madeline.
“This is the first time that I’ve created an exhibition that doesn’t tell a story or simply go from A to Z. This is another type of exhibition which approaches Hodler’s paintings and the spirit of his work and goes in the direction of what he was trying to do – to go straight to the most essential aspects and to open our eyes to nature as he saw it.”
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Rare footage of Ferdinand Hodler uncovered
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Researchers have found unique historical film footage of Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler - one of Switzerland's best-known artists.
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Bern-based artist Schindler started his collection in 1956, after he visited an exhibition of Hodler’s work. He purchased the majority of his sketches and drawings from the Swiss artist’s widow, Berthe Hodler. Between 1999 and 2002 Schindler entrusted the then-director of the Musée Jenisch with three items from his collection. He recently gave the museum…
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The exhibition “Ferdinand Hodler: View to Infinity” features about 80 works from the last five years of the artist’s life (1913–1918).(Pictures: Beyeler Foundation )
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Ferdinand Hodler: View to Infinity, named after one of the major paintings in the exhibition, has come to the Beyeler Foundation in Basel after an encouraging reception by both public and critics at the Neue Galerie in New York. Hodler’s paintings are gaining in value on the art market, and the exhibition in New York…
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Some 120 of his little-known drawings, sketchbooks, posters and etchings are currently on display at the Geneva Art and History Museum’s graphic art department until February 19, 2012. Together with the Kunsthaus in Zurich and Bern’s Kunstmuseum, Geneva has one of the world’s most important collections of Hodler works, comprising 144 paintings, 800 drawings and…
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.