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Press Release
Ferdinand Hodler
27 January to 26 May 2013
The Fondation Beyeler is the first Swiss museum to present a comprehensive exhibition of
Ferdinand Hodler's late work. His international significance for modern art becomes especially
apparent from these final years of his career.
Hodler, whose paintings shaped the self-image of Switzerland like no other artist's, was at the
same time one of the most important artists of the transition period from the 19th century to
Modernism. The Fondation Beyeler show, comprising about 80 works, focuses on Hodler's late
phase (1913-18). On view are works executed during the last five years of his life. By this time
the artist, who came from a socially deprived background, no longer needed to prove anything, as
he was prosperous and widely recognized. In his late paintings he turned once again to the great
themes of his life and activity, representing them in series and variations: his involvement with
self-portraiture, his legendary depictions of the Swiss Alps, his fascination with women, death and
eternal life. Hodler's works grew increasingly radical and abstract.
The exhibition begins with a document room, in which not only Hodler's life and oeuvre are
reviewed but the photographs are displayed which his close friend and collector, Gertrud DübiMüller, made of him and his family on the day before his death. The overall focus of the exhibition
lies on Hodler's landscapes, especially his close-up and distant depictions of the Alps. During the
final years of his life Hodler, suffering from consumption, was hardly able to leave his Geneva
apartment. From the balcony, usually in the early morning, he painted version after version of the
view over Lake Geneva to Mont Blanc. His concern was with the essence of painting, color and
form, and with the pantheistic unity of nature. Having to this point always very strongly
emphasized contours and proceeded from outlines, Hodler now became a painter of color areas,
foreshadowing the abstract color field painting of a Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman.
Especially important and moving are his depictions of the suffering and death of his lover,
Valentine Godé-Darel, to which an entire exhibition room is devoted. Probably never before had
the transition from life to death been recorded so intensely and radically in art. In parallel, based
on countless sketches, Hodler's last composition with figures emerged, View to Infinity. The
depiction shows five female figures in dancing poses whose arrangement can be imaginatively
continued into infinity. The Fondation Beyeler has succeeded in obtaining on loan not only the
largest version, the Basel version, but also the variants of the composition that Hodler retained in
his studio.
A special concern of the exhibition is to define Hodler's importance as a pioneer of modern
painting. The show was conceived in collaboration with the Neue Galerie, New York. After a long
intermission, the artist's work was previously displayed in the U.S., at one of the most renowned
of New York museums.
Exhibition curators are Ulf Küster (Fondation Beyeler) and Jill Lloyd (Neue Galerie).
The loans on view in the exhibition come from renowned Swiss and American private collections
and from distinguished national and international museums, such as the Musée d’art et d’histoire,
Geneva, the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Musée d’Orsay and the
Kunstmuseum Solothurn.
Fondation Beyeler thanks: Artephila Stiftung, Ernst Göhner Stiftung; Max Kohler Stiftung;
Novartis; Walter Haefner Stiftung for their generous support and contributions which made the
exhibition possible.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a Fondation Beyeler catalogue in German and English.
The trade edition is published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern. The catalogue includes a
foreword by Sam Keller and Ulf Küster, essays by Oskar Bätschmann, Sharon Hirsh, Ulf Küster,
Jill Lloyd and Paul Müller, as well as an appendix by Peter Pfrunder. The publication comprises
212 pages with approx. 200 illustrations, and will be available at the museum for 68 CHF (ISBN
978-3-906053-05-9, German; ISBN 978-3-906053-06-6, English).
Press images are available at http://pressimages.fondationbeyeler.ch
Further information:
Elena DelCarlo, M.A.
Head of PR / Media Relations
Tel. + 41 (0)61 645 97 21, [email protected], www.fondationbeyeler.ch
Fondation Beyeler, Beyeler Museum AG, Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen, Switzerland
Fondation Beyeler opening hours: 10 am - 6 pm daily, Wednesdays until 8 pm
Press Release
Ferdinand Hodler
27 January to 26 May 2013
With "Ferdinand Hodler", the Fondation Beyeler becomes the first Swiss museum to present a
comprehensive overview of the artist's late work, displaying not only his majestic Alpine landscapes but
the further key themes of his oeuvre: his self-portraits, fascination with women, death and eternity.
Hodler's significance for international modern art becomes especially evident in view of these final
years, 1913-18, when his work grew increasingly radical and abstract.
A sensitive self-promoter and rebel, with key contacts in Munich, Vienna and Paris, Hodler shaped the
self-image of Switzerland like no other artist. His works are part of the country's cultural memory. A
special emphasis of the exhibition is to shed light on Hodler's international significance as a pioneer of
modern painting. In collaboration with the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, the Neue Galerie in New
York mounted a show of Hodler's late work in 2012: "Ferdinand Hodler - View to Infinity". Ran in New
York until 7 January, this was the most significant exhibition ever devoted to the Swiss artist in the U.S.
It presented Hodler, who was a great idol of the Vienna Secession, as a pioneer and pathfinder of
modern art.
Hodler's landscapes, his series of views of Lake Geneva, the Alpine peaks, massifs and mountain
streams, and the well-nigh dancelike rhythms of his portraits, emerged from his conviction that the real
world and its representation in art were subject to the principles of parallelism. "Parallelism is a law that
towers over art, because it dominates life!" as C.A. Loosli quoted his artist-friend. By "parallelism",
Hodler understood a repetitive yet never exactly identical sequence of lines and movements, such as
the mountain peaks and clouds that determine the character of a landscape, including the sensations
they trigger in the viewer. Parallelism is stylized sensibility, yet by no means negates individuality. Like a
four-part song, a rhythmical counterpoint to life, lines and movements enter a harmonious symbiosis, as
in the large-format Basel version of View to Infinity. Kandinsky, too, believed he saw in Hodler's type of
"melodious composition" a means of removing the objective factor from art in order to set lines and
forms free.
View to Infinity also witnesses to Hodler's interest in the reform of dance, as represented for instance by
the modern expressive dance of Isadora Duncan and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. The preference for
natural motions and a liberated use of the body seen in Jaques-Dalcroze's choreographies fascinated
Hodler, who recognized the erotic charge of liberated, natural sequences of movement. For him, these
flowing, repetitive movements, in unending rhythms with varying figures, exemplified the parallelism and
lovely movements and countermovements of life and death, as well as that which all human beings
share in common. Around 1911, Paul Klee remarked of Hodler, despite his disapproving of his fellow
artist's pathos and business acumen, that he admired his ability to "depict the soul through the body."
Hodler's technique oscillated between figurative and abstract representation. A great friend of technical
appliances (the compass, for instance), Hodler did not hesitate to use tracing methods and employed
what is known as a Dürer glass, on which he drew the contours of his models before carefully
transfering them to canvas. He also in part reproduced the silhouettes of the mountains in his Alpine
landscapes, leading to great numbers of works in different versions, sometimes reproduced years after
the original. This had the advantageous side-effect of enabling Hodler to satisfy the great demand for
his works.
Here, the idea of parallelism issued in serial production, a key aspect of Hodler's oeuvre. This is
especially evident in the case of his monumental figurative compositions, which consist of varied and
recombined individual parts. His theory of parallelism, which brought him not only acclaim from his
fellow artists, many scoffing at his virtually pedantic approach to composition, found its expression in
Hodler's search for formal order and symmetry, and in fact in the repetition or variation of the same
elements in the name of establishing order. Advancing industrialization brought not only economic but
artistic consequences. The repetition of manufactured forms influenced modern vision and directly or
indirectly generated aesthetic developments. Yet Hodler combined his search for a perfect formal order,
for parallelism and symmetry, with yet a further concept: his idea of "unity" (Fr. "unité"). As this implied,
he was concerned with the formation of something superordinate, even though the term might apply to
mass production as well.
At the same time, Hodler was fascinated by photography, collecting photos and also using the medium
to prepare and execute his paintings. Thanks to his receptivity to this relatively new medium, we have
the compelling photographs made by his acquaintance and collector Gertrude Dübi-Müller, which
provide insights into Hodler's working methods and his personality and make us witness to the final day
of his life. The exhibition begins with a documentary room, in which not only Hodler's life and oeuvre are
recorded but many of Dübi-Müller's photographs are on view, which reflect the artist's taking leave of
Valentine Godé-Darel in an eerie way.
Hodler was devoted to "l'art pour la vie" rather than "l'art pour l'art". The viewer may well find it
disturbing to view the portraits of his partner, Valentine Godé-Darel, who fell fatally ill at age forty and
whose suffering Hodler recorded in drawings and paintings until her death in 1915. Here, he showed
that his theory of parallelism was in fact based on a penetrating observation of life, for his view was
both clear and loving, deeply human in the record of the physical demise of Valentine and her "linear
magnificence." An entire exhibition room is devoted to fourteen works from this period. The depictions
of the dying Valentine have the effect of landscapes of pain. Then, too, the small-format views of Lake
Geneva and Mont Blanc done after Valentine's death mark a transition to a more liberated handling of
color.
The exhibition focuses on Hodler's famous and popular landscapes, which celebrate the magnificence
and monumentality of the Swiss Alps. Hodler stages distance and proximity in the mountain landscapes
by means of a zoom effect, which brings the peaks up close yet at the same time makes them hover
like apparitions. Having to this point always strongly emphasized contours and proceeded from them,
he became a painter of flat areas in these landscapes. The abstract Color Field painting of Mark Rothko
and Barnett Newman seems prefigured here. Hodler's "close-ups" of mountain streams and rock
formations reveal their material character by means of bright illumination. His puristic landscape
depictions do without details, with a very few exceptions, such as grazing cows in the distance, tree
lines or swans by the lakeshore, both stylized and enigmatic. Between viewer and mountains lies a
great distance, marked by water surfaces, mist or clouds that transform the Alps into a meditational,
abstract image. The picture excerpt had an essential meaning for Hodler, establishing order and
symmetry, appearing as an "abbreviation of infinity." His experiments with repetition of cloud formations
recall the ovals of Piet Mondrian's depictions of trees and piers.
A similar synthesis of near and far is an aspect that likewise appears in Hodler's self-portraits. His gaze
is questioning, sceptical, directed straight at the viewer; his attitude self-confident. A contradictory
personality – artist, seducer, passionate theoretician, and practitioner of parallelism – simultaneously
sensitive, pragmatic and sanguine, Hodler was a very extroverted fellow who was quite able to deal
with criticisms of his work and, in his young years, had sought competitions and public exhibitions in a
veritably aggressive way.
From the artist of lucid contours in his younger period, Hodler developed into a painter who drew with
brush and color. While in his personal "Ten Commandments" he initially mentioned only the plane as
geometrically divisible point of departure, enabling contours that would lead finally to line, towards the
end of his life he expressed himself in some detail concerning the role of color in his art. He came to the
conclusion that form lives from color. Blue, recurring in the lake and Alpine landscapes and also in the
flowing attire of the female figures in View to Infinity, was his favorite color. This is evident in the
exhibition, which is dominated by the typical Hodler blue.
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of events, including the famous cabaret artist Emil
Steinberger with his program "Three Angels". Prof. Oskar Bätschmann will present Volume 2 of the
Hodler catalogue raisonné, edited in collaboration with S.I.K. Zurich. Doctor and best-selling author
Gian Domenico Borasio will hold a lecture on his book Über das Sterben (On Dying). Curator Ulf Küster
will present the new biography, "Ferdinand Hodler". The series of events will be rounded off by a
podium discussion in connection with "Das Magazin", moderated by editor-in-chief Finn Canonica.
Please see the attached sheet for further information.
Exhibition curators are Ulf Küster (Fondation Beyeler) and Jill Lloyd (Neue Galerie).
The loans on view in the exhibition come from renowned Swiss and American private collections and
from distinguished national and international museums, such as the Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva,
the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris and the Kunstmuseum
Solothurn.
Fondation Beyeler thanks: Artephila Stiftung, Ernst Göhner Stiftung; Max Kohler Stiftung; Novartis;
Walter Haefner Stiftung for their generous support and contributions which made the exhibition
possible.
A Fondation Beyeler catalogue, in German and English, will accompany the exhibition. The edition for
the book trade is published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern. The catalogue includes a foreword by
Sam Keller and Ulf Küster, essays by Oskar Bätschmann, Sharon Hirsh, Ulf Küster, Jill Lloyd and Paul
Müller, as well as a digression by Peter Pfrunder. The publication comprises 212 pages with approx.
200 illustrations, and is available at the museum for 68 CHF (ISBN 978-3-906053-05-9, German; ISBN
978-3-906053-06-6, English).
Press images are available at http://pressimages.fondationbeyeler.ch
Further information:
Elena DelCarlo, M.A.
Head of PR / Media Relations
Tel. + 41 (0)61 645 97 21, [email protected], www.fondationbeyeler.ch
Fondation Beyeler, Beyeler Museum AG, Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen, Switzerland
Fondation Beyeler opening hours: 10 am - 6 pm daily, Wednesdays until 8 pm
January 27 to May 26, 2013
01 Ferdinand Hodler
Genfer See mit Mont Blanc am frühen Morgen, 1918
Lake Geneva with Mont Blanc in the Early Morning
Oil on canvas, 60 x 126 cm
Private collection
Photo: Hulya Kolabas
02 Ferdinand Hodler
Genfer See mit Mont Blanc am frühen Morgen (März), 1918
Lake Geneva with Mont Blanc in the Early Morning (March)
Oil on canvas, 66 x 80.5 cm
Private collection, Zurich
Photo: SIK-ISEA, Zurich
03 Ferdinand Hodler
Genfer See mit Mont Blanc am frühen Morgen, 1918
Lake Geneva with Mont Blanc in the Early Morning
Oil on canvas, 65 x 91.5 cm
Kunsthaus Zürich, Gift of the Holenia Trust
in Memory of Joseph H. Hirshhorn
Photo: © Kunsthaus Zürich
04 Ferdinand Hodler
Sonnenuntergang am Genfer See von Caux aus, 1917
Sunset at Lake Geneva, Seen from Caux
Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 80.5 cm
Private collection
Photo: SIK-ISEA, Zurich
05 Ferdinand Hodler
Bergbach bei Champéry, 1916
Mountain Stream at Champéry
Oil on canvas, 83 x 98 cm
Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur
Photo: SIK-ISEA, Zurich
06 Ferdinand Hodler
Die Dents du Midi von Champéry aus, 1916
The Dents du Midi from Champéry
Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 110 cm
Nestlé Art Collection
Photo: © Nestlé Art Collection
07 Ferdinand Hodler
Landschaft bei Montana, 1915
Landscape near Montana
Oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm
Hilti Art Foundation, Schaan, Liechtenstein
Photo: Galerie Kornfeld, Bern
Fondation Beyeler
. ⁄.
January 27 to May 26, 2013
08 Ferdinand Hodler
Genfer See mit Mont Salève und Schwänen, 1914–15
Lake Geneva with Mont Salève and Swans
Oil on canvas, 65 x 85 cm
Kunstmuseum Bern, Bequest of Madame Hector
Hodler, Geneva
Photo: Kunstmuseum Bern
09 Ferdinand Hodler
Das Jungfraumassiv von Mürren aus, 1914
The Jungfrau Massif from Mürren
Oil on canvas, 63 x 86 cm
Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva
Photo: © Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, Yves Siza
11 Ferdinand Hodler
Bildnis Valentine Godé-Darel (Französischer Frauenkopf), ca. 1912
Portrait of Valentine Godé-Darel (French Female Head)
Oil on canvas, 43 x 33 cm
Kunsthaus Zürich, Vereinigung Zürcher Kunstfreunde
Photo: © Kunsthaus Zürich
12 Ferdinand Hodler
Blick in die Unendlichkeit, 1913/14–1916
View to Infinity
Oil on canvas, 446 x 895 cm
Kunstmuseum Basel
Photo: © Kunstmuseum Basel, Martin P. Bühler
13 Ferdinand Hodler
Selbstbildnis, 1914
Self-Portrait
Oil on canvas, 43 x 39 cm
Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen
Photo: Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen
14
Ferdinand Hodler on the balcony of his apartment
at quai du Mont-Blanc in Geneva, the day before his death,
May 18, 1918
Photograph by Gertrud Müller
Sammlung Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur
Photo: © Fotostiftung Schweiz, Gertrud Dübi-Müller Archiv
10 Ferdinand Hodler
Thuner See mit Stockhornkette, ca. 1913
Lake Thun with Stockhorn Range
Oil on canvas, 59.5 x 89 cm
Private collection
Photo: SIK-ISEA, Zurich
15
Ferdinand Hodler painting “Blooming Lilac” in the garden outside
his studio in rue du Grand-Bureau in Geneva, 1914
Modern print of a photograph taken by Gertrud Müller
Sammlung Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur
Photo: © Fotostiftung Schweiz, Gertrud Dübi-Müller Archiv
Press images http://pressimages.fondationbeyeler.ch
This visual material may be used for press purposes only. Reproduction is permitted for the duration of the exhibition only.
Please employ the captions as given and the relevant copyrights. We kindly request you to forward us a voucher copy.
Fondation Beyeler
Biography
Ferdinand Hodler, 1853–1918
1853
Ferdinand Hodler is born on 14 March in Bern, the first of six children. His father, Johann, is
a carpenter and his mother, Margareta, is employed as a cook, among other things.
1860
His father dies of tuberculosis.
1861
His mother weds Gottlieb Schüpbach, a decoration painter. The family lives in extreme
poverty.
1867
On 27 March, Hodler's mother, too, succumbs to tuberculosis. His three siblings (the two
others have died in the meantime of the same disease) are cared for by his uncle, Friedrich
Neukomm, in Langenthal. By 1885, tuberculosis will have claimed the lives of his remaining
siblings. Hodler begins an apprenticeship with Ferdinand Sommer in Thun, a scenery and
decoration painter who produces views of the Alps for the tourist trade.
1871
After having ruined an expensive flag material the previous year and fled from his
apprenticeship, Hodler goes to live with his uncle in Langenthal.
1872
He settles in Geneva, where at the Musée Rath he copies paintings by Alexandre Calame
and François Diday. He comes to the attention of the painter Barthélemy Menn, who accepts
Hodler into his class as a free-place student.
1877
First trip to Paris. Finishes his training with Menn.
1878
Travels to Spain and stays in Madrid.
1881
Participation in the Paris Salon with the self-portrait The Angry One (Der Zornige). Assists on
Edouard Castres's Bourbaki Panorama.
1884
Meets Augustine Dupin, who models for Hodler and becomes his lover.
1887
Hodler meets Bertha Stucki, whom he will wed in 1889. Hodler and Augustine Dupin's son,
Hector, is born on 1 October. A one-man show in Bern finds little public interest.
1890
The artist's first large-format painting emerges. Night (Die Nacht) establishes Hodler's
reputation as one of the most significant symbolist painters.
1891
The President of Geneva hinders the exhibition of Night (Die Nacht) at the Musée Rath, so
Hodler shows it at his own expense in the Geneva Voting Building. It is a great success.
Divorce from his wife Bertha.
1894
For the World's Fair in Antwerp, Hodler executes the monumental paintings Rise (Aufstieg)
and Fall (Absturz), only fragments of which have survived.
1896- Participates in the competition for the decoration of the Armory Room at the Schweizerisches
97
Landesmuseum in Zurich, and garners first prize. Hodler's designs cause a heated
controversy. Not until the Federal Council intervenes can the artist begin his Marignano
frescoes, which he will complete in 1900. As a suggestion for the glass mosaic on the
museum facade he develops the motif of his Wilhelm Tell painting of 1897. Hodler describes
his artistic aims in a lecture held in Fribourg, "La mission de l'artiste."
1898
Weds Berthe Jacques, who has been modelling for him since 1894.
1900
Hodler becomes a member of the Berlin Secession and corresponding member of the
Vienna Secession. Membership in the Munich Secession will follow in 1903.
1901
The Kunstmuseum Bern acquires four major symbolist works: Night (Die Nacht),
Day (Der Tag), The Disappointed Souls (Enttäuschte Seelen) and Eurythmy (Eurhythmie).
1904
Hodler is guest of honor at the Vienna Secession, where he exhibits 31 works. The great
success of this show leads to international recognition.
1907
Commission from the University of Jena for the mural Departure of German Students for the
Wars of Liberation in 1813 (Auszug deutscher Studenten in den Freiheitskrieg 1813).
Commission from the Swiss National Bank for the design of banknotes, which would be in
currency from 1911 to 1958. As motifs Hodler chose a woodcutter and a man scything grain,
which he will later develop further in many variants.
1908
Valentine Godé-Darel becomes Hodler's model and lover.
1909
The display of the painting Love (Die Liebe) at the Künstlerhaus Zürich triggers a scandal.
Hodler paints depictions of Augustine Dupin, the mother of his son Hector, as she lies dying
and in death.
1911
Commission for the monumental painting Unanimity (Einmütigkeit) in the New City Hall in
Hanover, which Hodler will finish in 1913.
1913
Becomes an officer of the Legion of Honor. Paulette, the daughter of Hodler and Valentine
Godé-Darel, already suffering from cancer, is born on 13 October. The artist and his wife
Berthe move into a luxurious apartment on Quai du Mont-Blanc in Geneva, which was
furnished by Josef Hoffmann.
1914
Hodler is co-signatory of the Geneva Protest directed against the shelling of Reims
Cathedral by German troops. This makes him persona non grata in Germany.
1915
25 January: death of Valentine Godé-Darel, whose illness and death Hodler has
accompanied with drawings and paintings. Increasingly battling with lung problems, Hodler
takes a cure in Néris-les-Bains near Vichy.
1917
The monumental painting View to Infinity (Blick in die Unendlichkeit), commissioned in 1910,
is installed at the Kunsthaus Zürich. The first and largest version of the work, finished in
1916, is acquired by the Kunstverein Basel and is now in the Kunstmuseum Basel. An
exhibition of 606 Hodler works at the Kunsthaus Zürich is an enormous critical and financial
success. Shortly before Christmas, Hodler suffers a physical breakdown. As the state of his
lungs makes him increasingly unable to leave his apartment, he begins a series of depictions
of the morning atmosphere over Lake Geneva from the balcony.
1918
Hodler is named honorary citizen of Geneva. On 18 May, the final photographs of him and
his family are taken by Gertrud Dübi-Müller, a close friend of the family and art collector.
Hodler dies on 19 May in his apartment.
Quotations from and about Ferdinand Hodler
"I will also paint different landscapes than I have thus far, or the same ones but differently. Do
you see how everything over them breaks down into lines and planes? Isn’t it as if you were
standing on the edge of the earth and engaging freely with the universe? From now on that is
what I will paint!"
Original German cited in Johannes Widmer, Von Hodlers letztem Lebensjahr (Zurich: Rascher, 1919), 8–9.
"A landscape that is familiar to us affects us more profoundly; we understand it better because we
know it. One has to have lived in it in order to understand exactly how much one must have
suffered, in order to be able to depict suffering. One has to have seen the heavens."
Ferdinand Hodler – Die grosse Linie, NZZ Format – Das Fernsehen der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung, quoted at timecode 20:20 in
the documentation.
"I paint the human body when it is moved by emotions; groups of figures sharing the same
emotion, one mood, expressed in the same gestures. Every feeling has its own gestures; I want a
single source for these physical movements."
Quoted in Carl Albert Loosli, ed., Ferdinand Hodler: Leben, Werk und Nachlass, vol. 4 (Bern: R. Suter, 1924), 283.
"One does not merely communicate a feeling but also a form. The substance of the
communication is a feeling with form."
“On ne communique pas seulement un sentiment, mais une forme. C’est le sentiment d’une forme que l’on communique.”
Ferdinand Hodler, Carnet 64, March 1899, Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, Cabinet d’arts graphiques, 15.
"It was through the large figures that I came closer to the broad planes, to the blue sky. Blue is in
fact my favorite color. Blue, you see, is also the color we can most easily bear in great expanses."
Original German cited in Johannes Widmer, Von Hodlers letztem Lebensjahr (Zurich: Rascher, 1919), 43, from notes he made
of a conversation with the artist, October 14, 1917.
"For example, if I want to express the infinity of a horizontal line of mountains or a lake, I always
have to ask myself where it has to start and where I have to cut it off; if I take it too far, then it
doesn‘t say anything anymore, because it is longer than necessary and is thus superfluous, and if
I cut it off just a little too soon, the very impression of infinity I wanted to convey will not be there."
Carl Albert Loosli, ed., Ferdinand Hodler: Leben, Werk und Nachlass, 4 vols. (Bern: Suter, 1921–24), 2:83.
"In the family there was an atmosphere of all-embracing death. Eventually it seemed to me that
there was always a dead person in the house, as if it had to be this way."
Quoted in Hans Mühlestein and Georg Schmidt, Ferdinand Hodler, 1853–1918: Sein Leben und sein Werk (Erlenbach-Zurich:
Rentsch, 1942), 5.
Ferdinand Hodler affirmed in 1917: "From now on, I will make paintings just for myself."
“En toutes choses, désormais, je ferai mes toiles à moi.”
Quoted in Hans Mühlestein and Georg Schmidt, Ferdinand Hodler, 1853–1918: Sein Leben und Sein Werk (Erlenbach-Zurich:
Rentsch, 1942), 512.
Paul Klee about Ferdinand Hodler: "[Hodler] is above all a depicter of people, who knows how to
portray the soul by means of the body like few others do."
Paul Klee, Schriften: Rezensionen und Aufsätze, ed. Christian Geelhaar (Cologne: Du-Mont, 1976), 95. Review of a Hodler
exhibition at the Galerie Thannhauser in Munich in 1911, originally published in Die Alpen 6, no. 4 (December 1911), 243–45.
Ferdinand Hodler’s friend Louis Duchosal: "Hodler is both a mystic and a realist, a duality that
disconcerts and disorients the majority of those seeking to form an opinion of his art."
Louis Duchosal, “Le salon suisse à Genève,” Revue 1, no. 1 (October 20, 1885), 38–39.
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