Ferdinand Hodler

Ferdinand Hodler was one of the famous Swiss painters of the 19th century. His early maturity paintings were landscapes, figure compositions, and portraits, treated with a strong realism. He made a voyage to Basel in 1875, where he studied the paintings of Hans Holbein. In the last decade of the 19th century his work progressed to combine influences from several genres including symbolism and art nouveau. He developed a style which he called "Parallelism", characterized by groupings of figures symmetrically arranged in poses suggesting ritual or dance. Hodler's work in his final phase took on an expressionist aspect with strongly colored and geometrical figures. Landscapes were pared down to essentials, sometimes consisting of a jagged wedge of land between water and sky. These mystical, non-realistic paintings depicting an escape from the bourgeois cares of modern life gained Hodler first notoriety and then popularity.