FERDINAND HODLER
curated by Ulf Küster e Jill Lloyd
Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 101 - Riehen
24/1/2013 - 26/5/2013
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 Dübi-Müller, 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 into Endlessness. 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.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a Fondation Beyeler catalogue in German and English. The trade edition is published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern.
