Ferdinand Hodler: the warrior on the 1917 Zurich exhibition poster

On 14 June 1917, the Kunsthaus Zurich opened a solo exhibition of Ferdinand Hodler, which ran until 5 August. For fifty-two days, around six hundred works, including two hundred drawings, made up the largest exhibition devoted to the artist up to that time. The Night, The Weary of Life, Disappointed Souls and Eurythmy were among the works brought together.

Hodler designed the exhibition poster himself. In the words of a contemporary quoted by the Kunsthaus, it depicts a powerful Swiss warrior kneeling, ready to strike. Hodler was already connected to Zurich through The Retreat from Marignano, a mural completed in 1900 for the hall of honour of the Swiss National Museum.

Observational commentary — The martial figure on the poster may visually evoke the military world of The Retreat from Marignano. No cited document, however, establishes that Hodler intended to recall this work or the controversy surrounding it. That controversy had proved enduring: a blood-covered halberdier had notably earned the painter the nickname “Hodler the Bloody”. In 1917, the poster accompanied a retrospective that was widely discussed in Switzerland and that an article in the Frankfurter Zeitung described as a “national revelation”.

The exhibition brought together several periods of Hodler’s career. Among the works shown was The Night, the exhibition of which had been banned for obscenity in Geneva in 1891 by the Administrative Council, before its success in Paris. In 1918, Hodler received the title of honorary citizen of the Republic and Canton of Geneva. Another solo exhibition opened at the Galerie Moos in Geneva on 11 May 1918 and continued until 30 June. Hodler died on 19 May 1918 in his apartment on the Quai du Mont-Blanc in Geneva.