Ferdinand Hodler: Landscapes Book

Ferdinan Hodler, a Swiss painter who lived from 1853 to 1919, is one of the most important of the country's artists. His work, situated between Realism and Symbolism, was widely shown all over Europe, prefiguring Art Nouveau and Modernist abstraction. His landscape paintings remain the most vital part of his oeuvre, for they provided his field of experimentation and a medium of reflection in which he examined and revised his oeuvre's very conditions. This book presents 70 of his most beautiful and central landscape paintings in lavish color reproductions, thereby documenting the importance of landscapes in the creative development of this seminal European painter. In his first forays into the genre, Hodler was influenced by the late Romantics and French landscape painting. Later, he developed his own quietly monumental style. In the last two decades of his life, he created landscapes that count among the major achievements of modern European painting. In this volume, in-depth essays outline the visual grammar of Hodler's landscape paintings, their function as "consensus formula," and their view of nature. Extensive captions describe in detail the visual strategies Hodler used to create his signature style. Ferdinand Hodler: Landscapes offers an indispensable introduction to the work of this Swiss master. Edited by Tobia Bezzola, Paul Lang and Paul Mueller. ~Essays by Oskar Baetschmann, Tobia Bezzola and Paul Mueller. Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.75 in./208 pgs / 120 color and 30 b & w.Read More