Ferdinand Hodler

Ferdinand Hodler – the great artist to whom the attribute of “Swiss” is attached as to no other. Hodler (b. 1853 Bern, d. 1918 Geneva) was especially associated with the city of Zurich due to his mural in the Hall of Fame of the Landesmuseum of Zurich (Retreat from Marignano, 1900), which was long controversial and gave him his nickname of “Bloody Hodler” because of a blood-smeared halberdier. “The work of Ferdinand Hodler is a world,” wrote the Kunsthaus Director Wilhelm Wartmann at the opening of his long essay in the catalog. The biggest show of the artist until then embraced about 600 works, including 200 drawings. On display were major works light The Night (1889), The Life-Weary (1892), The Disappointed Souls (1892), Eurythmia (c. 1895) or View into Infinity (1903). The poster was designed by Hodler himself. It shows, in the words of a contemporary, a “mighty, kneeling warrior, preparing to strike a blow.” Not only the martial subject of the poster seems alien from today’s point of view, but also Wartmann’s hypermasculine, bloated jargon: “The work of Hodler is also a life. A life from our own days, put together in a radiant form, […] the life of a man who is inwardly happy, who glows more hotly, who suffers more painfully, and who more powerfully commands the world and himself than all the others.” The exhibition was discussed in great detail all over Switzerland. “Rhythm, movement, and a binding spirit give Ferdinand Hodler’s art its character,” wrote Johannes Kohl in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. “A powerful, a great personality has spoken to me. That is what every visitor to the exhibition must say to himself.” (Luzerner Tagblatt). From a German perspective it was said: “For Switzerland itself this exhibition has become a national revelation, a symbol of the Swiss spirit and united ‘Helvetic’ culture” (Frankfurter Zeitung). With the exhibition appeared a catalog with an introductory text by Wilhelm Wartmann and a list of works with 32 illustrations.