Ferdinand Hodler

In 1887 the Kunstmuseum in Bern set up his first solo exhibition, although the response was minimal at the time. Hodler's controversial painting "Die Nacht” (The Night) from 1889/90 caused rather a stir in Geneva and Paris, marking a breakthrough in his artistic career. His Symbolist style was marked by a very clear realism coupled with a strictly decorative composition, following the symmetrical principles of parallelism. In 1891 the artist joined a Symbolist group of artists called “Rose-Croix-Esthétique” and took part in their salon at Galérie Durand-Ruel a year later. From 1896 to 1899 Hodler taught at the vocational school in Fribourg, and from 1897 he worked on the interior design of the Armoury of the Swiss National Museum in Zürich, meeting with controversial responses. Hodler took part in the Paris World Exhibition in 1900. In 1904, after his successful exhibition at the Secession in Vienna, he became known to a large group of collectors. His late works were characterised by large-format murals and Expressionist landscapes. In 1916 he was given a professorship at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva, and in 1917 Kunsthaus Zürich organised the first major retrospective exhibition of his works.