Ferdinand Hodler

Ferdinand Hodler is a painter Suisse, born the March 14th 1853 with Bern and dead the May 19th 1918 with Geneva.

Biography

Hodler is regarded as the Swiss painter who the most marked the XIX century end and the XX century beginning. . In 1872, it settles after having completed its training as a painter and decorator in the town of Geneva and will live there until its death. Its first fabrics result directly from Swiss realism artists like Anker, Albert Koller, Calame, but a voyage in Spain in 1878 opens new esthetic horizons to him. Consequently it knowingly subjects its subjects to its desire of abstraction and composition and sustitue its colors earthy to a light, impressionist chromatism by the grace, to dominant clear gray. However they are only while turning to symbolism that its work is finally recognized. Its imposing composition, the Night created sensation in particular with the Living room of the Champ de Mars in 1891 in Paris where it draws the attention of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes main venerated by Hodler as he had auparavent admired Gustave Courbet. The work of Puvis had to not only encourage it to try the adventure of the immense mural compositions, but she had also taught to him to transform in a conscious way the forms and the colors into fundamental decorative elements. From the iconographic point of view, Puvis thus becomes the model of the Bernese artist and its influence encourages it to paint paintings of paradisiac groups showing of the naked figures or vêtues with the ancient mode such as its Dialog with Nature . He is also an enthusiastic landscape designer and since 1890 strongly stylizes its topics, so much so that its lakes and mountainous solid masses are transformed into metaphors of eternity. Hodler, in this end of 19th century, approaches the Expressionnisme with coloured and geometrical figures. However, the most known tables of Hodler put in scene characters of the daily life like celebrates it Bûcheron (Musée of Orsay to Paris), fundamental gesture, image symbolic system of the labor and the force. If this painting is integrated perfectly into the renouveu European Secessions, she seeks to combine the call to imagination and the most direct realism, the ideation of nature, to see the expressionnism. In 1898, it marries Berthe Jacques. Hodler will have sorrow to bore in France, it is regarded at the time as too expressionist. In 1914, it denounces the rammings carried out by German artillery against Rheims. As reprisals, it is excluded from the German artistic companies. Patient and sad since the death of his mistress Valentine Godé-Darel in 1915, it dies the May 19th 1918 in Geneva leaving behind him some unfinished paintings of the streets of the city.

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