February 14 to May 25, 2025

To ensure a pleasant visit and reduce your waiting time at the entrance, we recommend that you reserve your ticket on our ONLINE TICKET SERVICE.

Curator:
Niklaus Manuel Güdel, Director of Musées de Pully and Institut Ferdinand Hodler
Laurent Langer, co-director of the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Neuchâtel
Philippe Clerc, art historian

Building on the success of the 2018 exhibition Hodler et le Léman, the Musée d'art de Pully has decided to tackle the Swiss painter's work once again in a major exhibition. Organized jointly with the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Neuchâtel, where it will be shown again (June 22 - October 12, 2025), the exhibition explores, for the first time, how Hodler was perceived by the Swiss art scene of the time, and is the result of close collaboration with the Institut Ferdinand Hodler.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the figure of Ferdinand Hodler was inescapable. The painter enjoyed recognition far beyond national borders, rubbing shoulders with artists of the calibre of Klimt and Rodin. The power of his work and his imposing personality made him a tutelary figure of Swiss art, so much so that when he died in 1918, critics did not hesitate to assert that without Hodler there would be no Swiss art. Indeed, he was the first artist not to leave his homeland to train and pursue a career abroad. For all the artists of his generation, and those that followed, he was either a role model or an inspiration. For the first time, the exhibition looks at how the artists of his time appropriated some of the master's precepts, and how they sought to develop their own originality. Around fifteen of Hodler's works are on show, along with works by some fifty artists from the first half of the 20th century. These include famous names such as Cuno Amiet, Giovanni Giacometti and Félix Vallotton, as well as lesser-known or even completely forgotten painters such as Casimir Reymond, Oswald Pilloud and Anna Haller.

One room is dedicated to Hodler's reception by the writer C. F. Ramuz, who lived in the house next door to La Muette - espaces littéraires. As editor-in-chief of Aujourd'hui magazine, Ramuz collected testimonials from artists who were contemporaries of Hodler for a special issue dedicated to the painter in May 1931. In particular, the Vaud writer wrote a text on the Swiss painter, entitled Souvenir, which will be given pride of place.

For the Neuchâtel leg, the exhibition will include more artists from Neuchâtel, present Le Falot - a group of artists opposed to Hodler's aesthetic - and invite three contemporary artists (Claudia Comte, Didier Rittener and David Weishaar) to create an artistic intervention in connection with Hodler.

A richly illustrated catalog, with numerous texts by Swiss art specialists, will be published by Notari, Geneva (approx. 280 pages and 180 illustrations).

Public opening on Thursday, February 13, 2025, 4pm-9pm.
A nursery for children aged 2 to 8 is open during the vernissage.

Practical information for your visit

For the best possible experience, we strongly recommend that you reserve your tickets online in advance of your visit, due to overcrowding. Tickets can still be purchased directly from the ticket office on site, subject to availability at the time you wish to visit.

The tour lasts approximately 1 hour. After admission, you can enjoy the exhibition without time limit during opening hours.

Please note that if you arrive a little early or after your reserved time slot, you may have to wait at the entrance. However, your tickets will remain valid for the day booked.


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.