Ferdinand Hodler. A model for Swiss art

For us. Furthermore, on this side of the Jura, Swiss painting was never very Swiss in the 19th century. In addition, Throughout this, it seems to be burst between a French pole from Léopold Robert, and Germanic with Albert Anker. For example, It is enough to remember that Anker came to Paris to work in the workshop of Charles Gleyre. Moreover, that he had a Parisian home until 1890k to realize that the situation is perhaps more complex than we think [1].

1. For example, The panel Trees (on parallelism)
with Fall evening They hodler
Photo: Olivier Bonfait

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Around 1900. For example, we readily opposed the ferdinand hodler. model swiss art Basel Arnold Böcklin, who was one of the German Roman And that we would bring closer to the more modern currents of Vienna or Munich, to the Bernese Ferdinand Hodler, without succeeding in locating the latter very well, between his large Swiss and German monumental sets and his views of French sites [2]. In addition, It must be said that his journey does not help a classification: originally from Bern. However, the painter wins Geneva on foot to train in the workshop of Barthélemy Menn. In addition, His painting of Nightrefused by the mayor of Geneva in 1891. For example, obtained the same year the silver medal at the Champ-de-Mars fair chaired by Puvis de Chavannes, but the international glory of the one who wrote in 1900 ” I only have one thought, get out of Switzerland » [3] is in Vienna in 1904, while he was invited ferdinand hodler. model swiss art to honor of the 19th Secession. Nevertheless, The recent exhibition of the Orsay Museum Swiss modernities (1890-1914) [4]. Moreover, had highlighted other figures like those of Giovanni Giacometti. Furthermore, trained in Paris but marked mainly by the Italian Giovanni Segantini, and that of Félix Vallotton, naturalized French in 1900 but still supported by Swiss Swiss collectors [5].

2. Meanwhile, The wall Trees
View of the exhibition Hodler. For example, A model for Swiss art
Photo: Olivier Bonfait

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That is to say all the usefulness of the exhibition Hodler. Consequently, A model for Swiss artcurrently presented at the Neuchâtel Museum of Art. However, History after a first step at the Museum of Art ferdinand hodler. model swiss art in Pully. Therefore, It offers a very complete panorama of the artist’s multiple impacts in the world of Swiss painting around 1900 [6]. Consequently, The effort is all the more laudable since the painter was not a workshop manager. Meanwhile, that he taught only a few years, that he has written little about his art, and that the Confederation preferred to fall back on wise artists for the decor of the Federal Palace of Bern after the scandal of the first official command for the Swiss National Museum of Zurich (Marignan’s retirement1897-1900). Similarly, Refusing the ancient concept of school. Meanwhile, the one infectioning with influence, the exhibition and its catalog trace well the very important role of Hodler in Swiss painting around 1900. Similarly, Instead of falling into a only positive approach which always makes a little hagiography. Similarly, they also have the merit of showing certain reactions, both ferdinand hodler. model swiss art pictorial and institutional, to the “click to Hodler”.

3. Additionally, Similarly, View of the room with the contemporary creation of Claudia Comte
View of the exhibition Hodler. Nevertheless, A model for Swiss art
Photo: Maciej Czepiel

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The exhibition develops this theme by insisting precisely on visual connections between Hodler’s painting. the works of many contemporary or slightly posterior artists. The heavy black curtain that you have to rule out to enter the exhibition is well necessary to break between the magnificent decor of the museum staircase. Total work of art Wagnerian painted by Léo-Paul Robert in a academic symbolist vein, and to be entered into a Hodlerian universe. This visual harmony fills the eight exhibition ferdinand hodler. model swiss art halls, thanks to the happy repetition of the same principle of hanging (ill. 1. 2): a yellow panel indicating the theme with a Hodler painting, a contemporary quote and an explanatory text always clear, and on the white walls on both sides, works close to other Swiss artists. The visit is chanted by a few variations: a room dedicated to the Neuchâtel collector of Hodler Willy Russ. who was also the curator of the museum, and where ten sculpted busts of the painter are exposed in front of the collector’s portrait by Hodler, three monumental works commissioned to artists for the exhibition of Neuchâtel. These showed the diversity of contemporary echoes of the artist more than a century after his death: monumental painting with political connotation. parallelism (ill. 3), a symbolic vision of nature.

ferdinand hodler. model swiss art

4. View of room 1 of the exhibition Hodler. A model for Swiss art
Photo: Maciej Czepiel

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By the figures of the Bucheron. the shepherd, the reaper or the mercenary of Marignan, the first room shows how the monumentality of the forms (long underlined by a black line) was used to give a strong presence in the space of the canvas to emblematic characters for the Swiss Confederation around 1900 (ill. 4) And how these two factors were declined by several artists. for example through The mower De Giovanni Giacometti [7]Gustave Jeanneret or Erich Hermès. The course continues. like a trip, by approaching different questions: strong figurative principles (constituting his doctrine of “parallelism” published in The artist’s mission In 1897 [8]), themes (the peaks, the tree, the flowers, ill. 5 and ferdinand hodler. model swiss art 6), places (grammont), poetics (planetary landscapes, ill. 7 and 8), all in a fluid and suggestive hanging. The last section. dealing with anti-Hodlerian reactions, relies on a different visual device: a tight hook of twenty works illustrates the group The feast which was formed in Geneva against Hodler around 1913-1914, with artists declaring to renounce his symbolism and his palette (ill. 9). On another wall, three large canvases representing lunches on the grass of Théophile Robert or Louis de Meuron show how these painters, a time marked by the Bernese artist, privileged around 1915 a contemporary bourgeois subject who did not interest Hodler and more treated in a style close to Maurice Denis or Cézanne.

5. Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918)
Pre floweraround 1901
Oil on canvas – ferdinand hodler. model swiss art 38.5 x 46.5 cm
Collection Christoph Blocher
Photo: Sik-Isea / Philipp Word

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6. Eat Amiet (1868-1961)
Abstraction (Prairie des Dent-de-Lion)around 1905
Tempera on Enit – 118 x 123 cm
Private collection
Photo: Sik-Isea / Philipp Word

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The course proposed over the themes. bringing together both French -speaking artists (Alice Bailly, William Röthlisberger) and Alémaniques (Max Buri, Martha Stettler) or Ticino (Edoardo Berta, Filipo Franzoni), thus configuring a Swiss space, is very stimulating for the eye. Obviously. as in any exposure of this kind, the choice of certain works can be questioned, either because the visual rapprochement seems a little distant, or on ferdinand hodler. model swiss art the contrary too general, or because the very nature of the connection with Hodler is ambiguous: real visual proximity ill. 10) Between Rising tide in the evening de Vallotton (1915). Lake Geneva seen from Caux in the sunset de Hodler, posterior (1917), she is a direct link or simply of the same pictorial poetics which borrows from close artistic ideas (we know that Vallotton considered parallelism as a theory ” a little big and made for blind ».

7. Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918)
Lake Geneva seen from Caux in the sunset1917
Oil on canvas – 60 x 80 cm
Private collection
Photo : SIK-WHOSE

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8. Marcel of Eternal (1891-1971)
View of Lake Geneva1919
Oil on canvas – 57 x 89 cm
Private collection
Photo: Piguet Hall of Sales

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This very convincing visual story of Hodler as a model. counter-model is taken up in the catalog (according to a slightly different order) entrusted to both young researchers (especially for sections presentations) and more confirmed historians. The catalog thus includes several tests on Hodler’s place in the Swiss artistic environment (he was an active president of the Society of Swiss painters. sculptors and architects From 1908 to his death ten years later) and on the artist’s iconography, who, as we have seen, occupies a room of the exhibition. The three commissioners each wrote a text on teaching (Philippe Clerc). on the ferdinand hodler. model swiss art link between Hodler and the institution they are responsible for (Niklaus Manuel Güdel for Pully, Laurent Langer for Neuchatel) [9]. An introductory essay by Anne Sophie Poirot draws up a welcome state of the reception of parallelism among Swiss artists (but the visual impact of the painter on his co-nationals exceeds parallelism). another of Louis Deltour, at the end, studies the different resistances in Hodler. These. after the painter’s death and in the context of European conflicts, are also divided between a French French-speaking reaction which becomes hostile to Hodler and a more favorable German and German reception [10].

9. The feast
View of the exhibition Hodler. A model for Swiss art
Photo: Olivier Bonfait

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In addition to the visual impact of Hodler canvases. reflection on the subjects and make it that they caused by their ” organic stylization of forms (P. 20), Hodler’s very personality had to play a certain role in the place he took on a model and counter-model. An artist who writes at the age of 21 ” The ten commandments of the painter F. Hodler “Or who exclaims” The parallelism is me “Had to have a radiant, but also imposing personality. The painter Cuno Amiet. close to Hodler, complains that he stifles him, the critic William Ritter considers that the Bernese painter is a ” bull “Followed by a” herd ». Still in 1931. the writer Ramuz found in Hodler a ” Alter ego to the heart To use the title of the beautiful study by Daniel Maggetti and Stéphan Pettermann. The questionnaire he sends to different artists ferdinand hodler. model swiss art about Hodler. and which he publishes in the journal Today In 1931, attests to the fascination that Hodler continues nearly 15 after his death [11]. Singularity of the character. institutional position and artistic force of the works; These three factors, according to different parameters, have woven a frame in the history of Hodler model and counter-model. This is remarkably the exhibition and the catalog rest.

10. Partial view of the section Planetary landscapes
View of the exhibition Hodler. A model for Swiss art
Photo: Olivier Bonfait

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Commissioners: Niklaus Manuel Güdel. Laurent Langer and Philippe Clerc.

Under the direction ferdinand hodler. model swiss art of Niklaus Manuel Güdel. Laurent Langer and Philippe Clerc, Ferdinand Hodler. A model for Swiss artÉditions Notari, 2025, 304 p., 42 € .ISBN : 9782940617197.

Practical information: Museum of Art and History of Neuchâtel, Esplanade Léopold-Robert 1, CH-2000 Neuchâtel (Switzerland). Tel: (+41) 32 717 79 20. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Price: CHF 12 (i.e. ≃ 12 €)/Reduced: CHF 4 (ie ≃ 4 €). Museum website.