Ferdinand Hodler and Modernist Berlin

Book excerpt: Ferdinand Hodler's expressive figure paintings, mountain landscapes and portraits are icons of modernism. Even during his lifetime, the work of the Swiss painter (1853-1918), who helped shape Symbolism, attracted great international attention. Contemporaries saw in Hodler above all the human actor, "who knows how to shape the soul through the body", said the artist Paul Klee in 1911. What is hardly known today: Hodler's path to fame also led via Berlin. Alongside Paris, Vienna and Munich, the imperial capital had developed into one of the most important European art metropolises at the beginning of the 20th century. These cities offered Hodler the opportunity to make his work known beyond the Swiss borders. With around 50 paintings by Hodler and works by Lovis Corinth and Hans Thoma, among others, who exhibited with Hodler in Berlin, his success story on the Spree is told for the first time.