Ferdinand Hodler

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Self-Portrait with Wide Eyes III , 1912
Autograph by Ferdinand Hodler

Ferdinand Hodler (born March 14, 1853 in Bern , † May 19, 1918 in Geneva ; citizen of Gurzelen BE) was a Swiss painter of Symbolism and Art Nouveau . His self-portraits play a special role as autobiographies in individual creative periods. He is one of the most famous Swiss painters of the 19th century.

Life

Hélène Weiglé , 1888, Städelsches Kunstinstitut
The night , 1889
The day 1900
The Truth , 1903
Hodler, The Childhood , 1893, Städelsches Kunstinstitut
Berthe Jacques, 1894
Valentine Godé-Darel in the sickbed
German students move out to the 1813 War of Independence , auditorium of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena
Unanimity (also: The Oath ), 1913, "Hodler-Saal" in the New Town Hall of Hanover

Ferdinand Hodler was born in the Käfigturm and grew up in poor conditions. His father, the carpenter Johannes Hodler, died of tuberculosis in 1860 at the age of 31 . The mother Margarete Hodler, married to the decorative painter Gottlieb Schüpbach for the second time, died in 1867 of the same disease, then called consumption. She left six children behind, of which Ferdinand was the oldest. Over the next 18 years, all of his siblings gradually died, also of tuberculosis. In 1865 Ferdinand Hodler took over the workshop of the alcoholic stepfather at the age of 12 and now supported the family.

In Thun he began an apprenticeship as a view painter around 1868. At the age of 18, now an apprentice to the vedute painter Ferdinand Sommer, he went to Geneva at the end of 1871 , painted company signs and copied pictures in the Musée Rath , where he was finally discovered by Barthélemy Menn in 1872 and his pupil. In the following years, Hodler studied the old masters and oriented himself towards the great artists of his time, such as Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet . In 1878/1879 he made a trip to Spain, where he a. a. dealt with the works of Velázquez , Tizian , Raffael , Rubens and Ribera . In 1881 he worked with other male students on the Bourbaki panorama by the history painter Edouard Castres .

In 1874, Hodler won first prize in the “Concours Calame” competition, which was announced by the “Société des Arts de Genève” in Geneva in memory of the famous landscape painter Alexandre Calame . For his picture with the title "Sous-Bois" ("Le Nant de Frontenex", German title "Waldinneres", translated undergrowth ) he received prize money of 300 francs. Until the end of his training at the Geneva Ecole de Dessin in 1878 , he participated in other exhibitions with individual works. Further exhibitions followed in London in 1881, in Zurich in 1883, in Geneva in 1884 and in 1885 for the world exhibition in Antwerp. In the mid-1880s, Hodler began to break away from the artistic models of his early years. From 1885 he created pictures in the style he developed, called parallelism. At that time the “body-soul parallelism” was heavily discussed under the influence of Wilhelm Wundt's writings . Hodler saw that nature organized itself in parallel patterns: the tree trunks in the forest, the symmetrical lines of the human body, the symmetrical opposition of day and night, man and woman. Hodler's artistic work was also strongly influenced by the constant confrontation with dying and death since his childhood, by typically Swiss views and by nature.

In December 1885 he had his first solo exhibition at the Geneva Cercle des Beaux-Arts . The second solo show was made possible for him in 1887 at the Bern Art Museum in his hometown. With his work he found increasing approval, approval and positive feedback for his “typical Swiss design styles”, for example with the painting Das brave Frau from 1886, in which his preferred orientation, the combination of naturalism and the principle of beauty, was confirmed. But he also received harsh criticism, experienced rejection of works, the exclusion of certain pictures and a tangible hindrance to the exhibition of his works, for example by the mayor of Geneva, Théodore Turrettini . In several of his creative periods, this led to serious public disputes up to the stylization of a so-called "Hodler case", in which the conservative press in individual Swiss regions stood out.

In 1884, Hodler met Augustine Dupin, who was his model for various works and of whom he made a portrait in 1909 showing her on her deathbed. Their son Hector was born in 1887. In 1889 Hodler married Bertha Stucki, but the marriage was divorced in 1891. In the painting The Night , which was created in the same year, both women are shown.
With this painting, which addresses the themes of sleep, death and sexuality, Hodler achieved his breakthrough. The exhibition of the picture in the Musée Rath in Geneva was prevented at the last minute and the painting was condemned as immoral. But a privately organized exhibition was a great success. Exhibitions and honors followed in Paris , Munich , London , Berlin , Vienna and Venice .

In 1892 Hodler exhibited the painting The disappointed souls in the Salon de la Rose + Croix in Paris and became a member of this society. In 1897, Hodler won a competition to decorate the arms hall of the Swiss National Museum in Zurich on the subject of “The Swiss Retreat from the Battle of Marignano” in 1515. Hodler's designs led to the greatest art controversy that had existed in Switzerland up to that point had, because the director of the Landesmuseum, Heinrich Angst, boycotted his designs and a delegation from the Federal Council had to travel from Bern to Zurich to approve Hodler's works. Hodler's steadfastness and the active support of national and international art lovers led to a breakthrough in this and numerous similar disputes about the meaning and role of art.

In 1894 Hodler met Berthe Jacques, who became his second wife in 1897. This marriage, like the first, remained childless. Between 1896 and 1899, Hodler gave drawing and painting lessons at the industrial museum in Freiburg . His students included Oswald Pilloud , Hiram Brülhart , Raymond Buchs and Jean-Edouard de Castella . On March 12, 1897, he gave a lecture at the Freiburg Art Association with the title The Mission of the Artist .

During the world exhibition in Paris in 1900 , Hodler received the gold medal for three of his exhibited works. By 1900 he sent over 200 exhibitions. He was now one of the leading painters in Europe and a typical representative of Swiss art in terms of his style and the expressiveness of his work. All of this also improved his previously rather precarious economic situation. In the same year he became a member of the Vienna and Berlin Secession , and in 1904 of the Munich Secession .

In 1905 Karl von Weizsäcker asked Hodler whether he wanted to succeed Leopold von Kalckreuths at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart , which he refused. In 1908, Hodler met Valentine Godé-Darel (1873–1915), who was his mistress has been. Godé-Darel fell ill with cancer in 1913 shortly after their daughter was born. Hodler recorded her path through illness and infirmity to death in numerous paintings and drawings. The daughter Pauline (also Paulette, 1913–1999) was raised by Hodler's wife Berthe while her mother was sick and was later adopted by Hodler. Pauline Valentine Magnenat-Hodler later appeared as a painter herself.

Like milestones, Hodler's 113 self-portraits mark his development as a person and an artist. They testify to the search for identity, for social and personal values, they are an expression of his protests, his persistence and are often a clear mirror of his mental state. Fanned by his instinct for self-preservation in the repeated arguments with his own outside world, he succeeds in setting himself up as an example of an attitude. Expressions for this include Der Zornige 1881, Der Historschreiber 1886, Das Pariser Selbstbildnis 1891, Self-Portrait with the Roses 1914 and Last Self-Portrait 1918.

Hodler led a bitter struggle to understand the world as it is and to express his own view of the world in art. Uncompromising love of truth towards nature and human beauty was his goal. "I set the truth about beauty - I can't help it," he wrote in 1883 to a fellow musician. Starting with the portrait Die Nacht , Hodler created several works that, in this sense, are signals and effects of his exploration of nature, beauty and historical values. Hodler's late, expressionist-looking simple landscape paintings also make him one of the most important painters of the Alpine landscape.

In Germany, Hodler was excluded from almost all artists' associations in 1914 when he signed a letter of protest against the bombardment of Reims Cathedral by German artillery during World War I. In his homeland, however, his recognition grew: as early as 1911, two banknotes were printed with motifs from his pictures ( The Mower , The Woodcutter ), and in 1913 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel. In 1916 he received a professorship at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva. In 1917 the Kunsthaus Zürich held its first major retrospective . In the year of his death he became an honorary citizen of Geneva. In 1932 the former Waisenhausstrasse in Bern was renamed "Ferdinand Hodler Strasse" in honor of Ferdinand Hodler, and was renamed Hodlerstrasse since January 1, 1948 ; the Kunstmuseum Bern is located on it.

Hodler was a close friend of the Bernese writer Carl Albert Loosli , who also published several books about him. Intensive contacts with numerous artists of his time such as Cuno Amiet , Gustav Klimt , Giovanni Giacometti and many others helped him to find international recognition and a broad public for his work in Europe. He was a member of the German Association of Artists .

In 1944, the city of Geneva, together with the Federal Department of the Interior, announced a competition for the erection of a Ferdinand Hodler monument. The jury did not award a first prize for the 24 designs received. However, Jakob Probst was commissioned to create the memorial for Hodler. The 25-ton block of Valais limestone represents a four-meter-high warrior figure, which should be reminiscent of the painting by Hodler's The Battle of Marignano . As soon as it was completed, the jury found the memorial to be too massive and powerful and rejected it. In 1955 the monument was erected as a military monument in the Olten city park.

Lake Geneva is a frequent motif in Hodler's work . On 5 June 2007 reached Lake Geneva from Saint-Prex with 10.9 million Swiss francs at an auction by Sotheby's the highest price a painting of a Swiss painter ever reached.

Works (selection)

Emotion , 1900, Belvedere , Vienna
The woodcutter , 1910
Dancer Giulia Leonardi , 1910, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne
Landscape on Lake Geneva , around 1906, Neue Pinakothek in Munich
  • 1878: On the banks of the Manzanares , oil on canvas, 44 × 65 cm, Geneva , Musée d'art et d'histoire
  • 1886: The courageous woman , oil on canvas, 99 × 171.5 cm, Basel , Kunstmuseum (inv.no.1544)
  • 1890: Girl in a shirt, at the window , oil on canvas, 47.5 × 32.5 cm Neuss , Clemens-Sels-Museum
  • 1892: Die Lebensmüden , oil on canvas, 149.7 × 294 cm, Munich , Neue Pinakothek (Inv.No. 9446)
  • 1895: Evening on Lake Geneva from Chexbres , oil on canvas, 100 × 130 cm, Zurich , Kunsthaus
  • 1896: The Shepherd's Dream , oil on canvas, 239 × 149 cm, New York City, Metropolitan Museum
  • 1897: The Dream , mixed media on brown paper, 98.5 × 67.5 cm, Zurich, private collection
  • 1898: Kastanienallee near Biberist , oil on canvas, 38 × 55 cm, ex Oskar Miller Collection , Christie's , Zurich 2012
  • 1898: Portrait of Madame de R. , mixed media on wood, 35 × 27 cm (shown on the GDR postage stamp Michel No. 1262)
  • 1899: Retreat from the Battle of Marignano, wall fresco, 332.5 × 490 cm, National Museum Zurich
  • 1900: Emotion , oil on canvas, 115 × 70.5 cm, Vienna, Belvedere , (inv.no.1942)
  • 1902: Kiental with Blüemlisalp , 102.5 × 71 cm, oil, Beurret & Bailly, Basel 1914
  • around 1906: Landscape on Lake Geneva , oil on canvas, 59.8 × 84.5 cm, Munich, Neue Pinakothek (inv.no.8715)
  • 1907: Lake Silvaplana in autumn , oil on canvas, 71 × 92.5 cm, Zurich, Kunsthaus
  • 1909: Femme joyeuse , oil on canvas, 127 x 74 cm, private collection, Switzerland
  • 1909: The Schynige Platte, (Landscape in the Bernese Oberland) , oil on canvas 67.5 × 90.5 cm, Musée d'Orsay , Paris
  • 1911: Lake Geneva from Chexbres from , oil on canvas, 71 × 90 cm, Public Art Collection, Basel
  • 1911: Lake Geneva with Jura , oil on canvas, 45.5 × 56.5 cm, St. Gallen , Kunsthalle
  • 1911: The Breithorn , oil on canvas, 70 × 77 cm, St. Gallen, Art Museum
  • around 1913: Lake Thun with Stockhorn chain , oil on canvas, 59.5 × 89 cm, private collection
  • 1913: Unanimity , oil on canvas, 53.5 × 163.5 cm, Hanover , New Town Hall , Hodlersaal
  • 1915: Montana landscape with Becs de Bosson and Vallon de Réchy , 66 × 80 cm, Sotheby's Zurich 2013
  • 1916: Dents Blanches , 69.5 × 87.5 cm, Sotheby's Zurich 2013
  • 1917: Landscape near Caux with rising clouds , oil on canvas, 65.5 × 81 cm, Zurich, Kunsthaus

Graphic work

  • 1891: Paris self-portrait , pencil on paper, 20 × 16 cm, private property
  • around 1891: unemployed , pencil, charcoal, pastel, watercolor, 61 × 47 cm, private collection
  • 1892/93: Adoration , pencil, watercolor, black chalk on paper, 62 × 45 cm, Winterthur , Kunstmuseum
  • 1912: Double portrait of Valentine Godé-Darel and Ferdinand Hodler , pencil on paper, Zurich, Kunsthaus
  • 1918: Study for the last self-portrait , lead on cream-colored paper, Geneva, Musée d'art et d'histoire

Contemporary exhibitions

Large exhibitions in the present are mentioned here as evidence of the broad reception.

literature

Biographical

Art criticism, catalogs

  • Anna Bálint: Exodus of German students in the war of freedom of 1813 (1908–1909). Ferdinand Hodler's Jena history painting. Order history, genesis of work, afterlife. In: Europäische Hochschulschriften, Series 28: Art History, Volume 340, Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt / M., Berlin, Bern, New York, Paris, Vienna 1999, ISBN 978-3-631-34658-7 .
  • Hans Mühlestein / Georg Schmidt: Ferdinand Hodler 1853–1918. His life and his work . Rentsch, Erlenbach 1942; Unionsverlag, Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-293-00020-7 .
  • Jura Brüschweiler (Ed.): Ferdinand Hodler and his son Hector. New year's paper Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft 1966/1967.
  • Jura Brüschweiler: Ferdinand Hodler in the mirror of contemporary criticism . Book Club Ex Libris and Edition Rencontre, Lausanne, 1970.
  • Jura Brüschweiler: Ferdinand Hodler. A painter before love and death. Ferdinand Hodler and Valentine Godé-Darel, a cycle of works from 1908–1915 . Exhibition catalog Zurich, St. Gallen, Munich and Bern, 1976/1977.
  • Hodler and Freiburg. The artist's mission. Hodler et Friborg. La Mission de l'artiste. Exhibition catalog. Museum of Art and History, Freiburg in Ü., Benteli, Bern, 1981.
  • Jura Brüschweiler (Ed.): Ferdinand Hodler. Benteli, Bern 1983, ISBN 3-7165-1109-9 .
  • Jura Brüschweiler: La participation de Ferdinand Hodler au "Panorama" d'Edouard Castres et l'avènement du parallélisme hodlérien . In: Journal for Swiss Archeology and Art History . Vol. 42, 1985/4, Zurich 1985.
  • William Vaughan, Peter Wegmann, u. a .: Caspar David Friedrich to Ferdinand Hodler: A Romantic Tradition: Nineteenth-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Oskar Reinhart Foundation. Winterthur. (English)
  • Rudolf Koella: Ferdinand Hodler. Verlag Hirmer, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-7774-8210-2 . (To the exhibition in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal)
  • Waltraud 'Wara' Wende: Artists ' pictures - or: On how Ferdinand Hodler and Erica Pedretti deal with death . In: Duitse Kroniek. Amsterdam 2003, pp. 80-103.
  • Matthias Fischer: Ferdinand Hodler. The exposure en permanence. Le milieu artistique et culturel à Genève avant 1900. In: Ferdinand Hodler et Genève. Collection du Musée d'art et d'histoire Genève, édité à l'occasion de l'exposition au Musée Rath Ferdinand Hodler et Genève. Musée d'art et d'histoire, Genève 2005, pp. 11-19.
  • Dominik Müller: Erica Pedretti - Ferdinand Hodler . In: Konstanze Fliedl (Ed.): Art in Text. Stroemfled / nexus 72, Frankfurt / Basel 2005, pp. 181–199.
  • Katharina Schmidt, Lazlò Baàn, and Matthias Frehner (eds.): Ferdinand Hodler. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7757-2062-5 .
  • Ferdinand Hodler. Catalog raisonné of the paintings. Landscapes. Volume 1. Edited by the Swiss Institute for Art Research Zurich. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-85881-244-5 . (Volume 1 contains part volume 1 [cat. 1–300] and part volume 2 [cat. 301–626, D1 – D52 (questionable attributions), R1 – R70 (erroneous and incorrect attributions)])
  • Matthias Fischer: The young Hodler. An artistic career 1872–1897. Nimbus, Wädenswil 2009, ISBN 978-3-907142-30-1 .
  • Ferdinand Hodler in caricature and satire. Edited and commented by Matthias Fischer. / Ferdinand Hodler par la caricature et la satire. Ed. et commenté by Matthias Fischer. Benteli, Sulgen 2012, ISBN 978-3-7165-1718-5 .
  • Ferdinand Hodler. Catalog raisonné of the paintings. Portraits. Volume 2. Edited by the Swiss Institute for Art Research Zurich. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-85881-255-1 . ([Cat. 627–1055, Cat. D53 – D68 (questionable attributions), Cat. R71 – R105 (erroneous and incorrect attributions).])
  • Jill Lloyd and Ulf Küster (eds.): Ferdinand Hodler. Fondation Beyeler, Riehen-Basel 2013; Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2013, ISBN 978-3-906053-05-9 .
  • Karoline Beltinger, Gabriele Englisch, Danièle Gros et al .: Art-technological research on painting by Ferdinand Hodler, SIK-ISEA / Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-908196-56-3
  • Karoline Beltinger: Hodler paints. New art-technological research on Ferdinand Hodler , SIK-ISEA / Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-85881-626-9

documentary

  • Ferdinand Hodler - The heart is my eye . The script and direction are from Heinz Bütler with the assistance of Jura Brüschweiler. There are still more to say: Peter Bichsel , Harald Szeemann and Rudolf Schindler. Length 31 min., Format already 16: 9, in PAL. Distributed by Accent Films International. 2003.

Literary reception

  • In 1925, Robert Walser dealt intensively with the painting of the same name by Ferdinand Hodler from 1885 in his short prose text Hodler's Buchenwald .
  • In her novel Valerie or the naughty eye (1986), Erica Pedretti takes Valentine Godé-Darel's death pictures as the starting point for reflections on the relationship between painter and model.

Web links

Commons : Ferdinand Hodler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Radibum: Brief curriculum vitae about Ferdinand Hodler. Berner Woche in words and pictures, accessed on March 2, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Who was Ferdinand Hodler really? In: tagesanzeiger.ch. Paid link.
  3. ↑ Musée'd'Orsay, exhibition November 13, 2007 to February 3, 2008. ( Memento of the original from April 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musee-orsay.fr
  4. ↑ Rudolf Vierhaus (Ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia (DBE). Walter de Gruyter, 2006, Volume 5, p. 13.
  5. ^ Biography of Ferdinand Hodler. ( Memento from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  6. ↑ Waltraud Wende: Artists' Pictures - or: About how Ferdinand Hodler and Erica Pedretti deal with death. In: Hans Ester, Guillaume van Gemert (ed.): Artist pictures. For the productive examination of the creative personality. Editions Rodopi Amsterdam - New York, 2003. pp. 82-84.
  7. ^ Full members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903. "Hodler, Ferdinand". ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: kuenstlerbund.de. Retrieved November 30, 2015.
  8. ↑ Alexandra Matzner: Withdrawal from the battle of Marignano. Retrieved September 12, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Ferdinand Hodler , www.mural.ch, accessed on January 15, 2012.
  10. ↑ Ferdinand Hodler. ( Memento from February 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). In: fondationbeyeler.ch. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  11. ↑ Robert Walser: When the weak consider themselves strong. Prose from the Bernese period. 1921-1925. In: dandelon.com.
personal data
SURNAME Hodler, Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Bern
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1918
Place of death Geneva