Q131586050

Painted in 1915 and held at the Kunsthaus Zürich, this late work by Ferdinand Hodler was produced in the final years of his life and during one of the most personally devastating periods he endured. In January 1914 Hodler's companion Valentine Godé-Darel was diagnosed with cancer; he painted her decline obsessively through 1914 and into 1915, producing one of the most extraordinary series of medical and emotional observation in 20th-century art. She died in January 1915. At the same time, the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 — and Hodler's public protest against the German bombardment of Reims Cathedral, which cost him his honorary memberships in German academies — added political turmoil to personal grief. The 1915 date places this work within this crucible. Hodler's late style, already moving toward a monumental planar simplicity, intensified under the pressure of grief into some of the most formally concentrated work of his career. The Kunsthaus Zürich holds the largest collection of his work.

Hodler's late technique is defined by Parallelism — his theory that the repetition of similar forms in nature and composition expresses the underlying unity of existence. By 1915 this manifests as bold simplification of form, high-keyed color relationships, and a reduction of spatial depth in favor of surface pattern and rhythmic structure. Contour lines are firm and deliberate, with color areas bounded rather than blended.