Ferdinand Hodler: Hodler//Parallelism

Hodler//Parallelism
Ferdinand Hodler, born in Bern and died in Geneva, was one of Switzerland’s most renowned painters already during his lifetime—2018 is the centenary year of his death. To mark this date, the Kunstmuseum Bern, jointly with the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève, is mounting a special exhibition that investigates this remarkable painter from the novel perspective of parallelism. The show is neither a retrospective nor a themed exhibition. Instead it centers on the simple, lucid, and effective theory of parallelism—a principle of composition that seeks revelation in the order of nature. Thus trees that line a path, clouds, mountains mirrored in a lake, or a group of people are arranged in parallel patterns, patterns that the artist enhances by means of symmetry and repetition. Hodler developed this theory for his art on the basis of a deliberately simplified understanding of the cosmos and created a powerful and unique visual vocabulary.

Curators
Nina Zimmer, Laurence Madeline

Press contact
Maria-Teresa Cano, press@kunstmuseumbern.ch, T +41 31 328 09 44