The presentation includes some 160 exhibits. It is curated by Tobias G. Natter, former Director of the Leopold Museum in Vienna and author of the catalogues raisonnés of the paintings of Gustav Klimt (2012) and Egon Schiele (2017). The exhibition sheds new light, from a Viennese perspective, on Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918), who was at the time already seen as Switzerland’s ‘national artist’.

Of the artists Hodler met in Vienna, he reserved the greatest admiration for Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), and in particular ‘the decorative element’ of his art. Yet while known as a peerless exponent of colour, eroticism and ornament, Klimt was more than just the leading figure in Viennese Stilkunst. He played a pioneering role in breaking down the traditional distinction between the ‘high’ art of painting and sculpture and the ‘low’ form of applied art and championed a new definition of the artist: one which also embraced those able to ‘experience the work of art in emotional terms’.

Hodler and the 1904 Secession exhibition

When the Vienna Secession invited Ferdinand Hodler to take part in its 19th exhibition, it was to ‘enable a wider audience to appreciate Hodler’s greatness’. Its pioneering and ambitious aim was to demonstrate ‘that Ferdinand Hodler is not only the greatest Swiss artist, but one of the greatest ever’. Hodler was able to show all the main works he had completed up to that time. The response was overwhelming. The exhibition gave the Swiss painter everything an artist could hope for from the public: lavish praise, a good press, and important sales. Overall, the show in Vienna was a milestone in the reception of the artist, who was aged 51 at the time.