The symmetry of souls: Ferdinand hodler and the art of revealing the invisible

Yet behind this quest for the absolute lies a man haunted by death—an artist who lost his mother and five siblings to tmajor digital platformsculosis before the age of twenty, and who would paint Alpine landscapes until his last breath, where time itself seemed suspended. Hodler did not invent Symbolism; he reinvented it, infusing it with the geometric rigour of a Genevan watchmaker and the melancholy of a country torn between neutrality and identity. His work, both mystical and carnal, national and universal, remains one of the most enigmatic of the late nineteenth century. And if his paintings still unsettle us today, it is because they speak not only of beauty, but of something far deeper: the fear of disappearing, the longing for eternity, and that strange certainty that art might, perhaps, save men from oblivion.

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01When repetition becomes a prayer

There is, in Day (1900), a grace that is almost hypnotic. Five naked women, their bodies elongated like flames, walk in procession toward the light. Their raised arms trace a wave, their feet skim the ground in unison, and their barely sketched faces seem turned toward the same invisible horizon. Hodler spent months refining this composition, making models pose for hours in his Geneva studio, adjusting every curve until symmetry became self-evident. "Beauty is born of repetition," he wrote in his notebooks. "Like waves, like seasons, like the beating of the heart."

This principle, which he called parallelism, was not merely a technique—it was a philosophy. For Hodler, the universe was governed by invisible laws, by rhythms that echoed one another: the ebb and flow of tides, the course of the stars, the cycles of life and death. By repeating forms, arranging them in mirrors or friezes, he sought to reveal this fundamental harmony. Truth (1903), where two women—one veiled, the other unveiled—face each other like two facets of the same enigma, is its most striking example. Symmetry here is not decorative; it is metaphysical. It suggests that everything has its double, its opposite, its complement.

Not all contemporary critics grasped this dimension. Some saw it as mere geometric obsession, others as an overbearing influence of the Japanese prints Hodler collected. Yet when one looks at The Chosen One (1893–1894), where two identical women frame a haloed child, it becomes clear that parallelism was far more than a visual trick. It was an attempt to give form to the invisible—God, destiny, or that mysterious force that drives men to repeat themselves, generation after generation.

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02The painter who defied death

Hodler was twenty when tmajor digital platformsculosis took his mother. He was thirty when his first wife, Augustine Dupin, died in childbirth, taking their child with her. And he was sixty when Valentine Godé-Darel, his muse and lover, succumbed to cancer before his eyes. Death was not just another theme for him; it was an obsession, a constant presence, almost tangible. In The Night, the skeleton leaning over the sleepers is not an abstract allegory—it is death itself, as he had seen it lurking around his childhood bed.

But it is in the portraits of Valentine that this haunting reaches its peak. During the last months of her life, Hodler painted his companion almost daily, capturing every stage of her physical decline with clinical precision. In Valentine Godé-Darel on Her Deathbed (1915), the emaciated face, the hands crossed over her chest, the sheets crumpled like a shroud—everything breathes a raw, almost unbearable truth. Yet there is a strange serenity in this painting. As if, by fixing death on canvas, Hodler had found a way to tame it.

These works are not traditional vanitas. They do not seek to remind us of life’s fleeting nature, but to seize its very essence. Hodler does not paint death as an end, but as a transformation. In Day, the women walking toward the light seem reborn with every step. In Truth, the veiled figure could just as well be life as death—two sides of the same coin. And in his Alpine landscapes, where mountains are reflected in still lakes, time itself seems suspended, as if nature had discovered the secret of eternity.

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03Hodler’s secret Switzerland

Hodler has often been reduced to the role of "national painter," the man who gave Switzerland its first masterpieces recognised abroad. The Retreat from Marignan (1897), where Swiss mercenaries retreat under driving rain, was commissioned to mark the 400th anniversary of the defeat—a shameful episode in Helvetic history. Yet Hodler was never merely an illustrator of Swiss identity. His landscapes, allegories, and portraits tell another story: that of a country torn between neutrality and passion, tradition and modernity.

Take Lake Thun with the Niesen (1904). At first glance, it is a postcard: snow-capped mountains, deep blue water, a cloudless sky. But look closer. The reflections in the lake are not perfect—they are distorted, as if the water’s surface were stirred by an invisible breath. The colours, of an almost supernatural intensity, seem to vibrate. And that golden light bathing the scene? It is not realistic. It is symbolic. Hodler does not paint a landscape—he paints an emotion, a memory, perhaps even a dream.

This approach, both realistic and dreamlike, is typically Swiss. It recalls the stories of Robert Walser, where nature becomes a mirror of inner turmoil, or the landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, where mountains are silent cathedrals. But Hodler adds something more modern: a tension between order and chaos, between geometry and feeling. His lakes are perfect mirrors, but his skies are crossed by threatening shadows. His figures are arranged with mathematical precision, yet their faces express an almost Expressionist distress.

It is this duality that makes him a profoundly Swiss—and profoundly universal—painter.

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04The studio of shadows and light

Step into Hodler’s studio on Rue des Granges in Geneva, and you will understand why his paintings have such a distinctive luminosity. The walls are covered with sketches, photographs, reproductions of Japanese prints. A large skylight filters a diffuse light, softened by white linen curtains. On an easel, a work in progress: Truth, perhaps, or a new landscape of Lake Léman. Hodler works standing, brush in hand, his eyes narrowed to better capture the nuances.

His technique is both rigorous and intuitive. He always begins with a grisaille underlayer, a monochrome sketch where he establishes values and shadows. Then he applies colour in successive layers, using glazes to give depth to skies and waters. His landscapes are never painted from life—he composes them from memory, in the studio, using sketches and photographs. "Nature is too disorderly," he said. "The artist must discipline it."

But it is in his treatment of light that his genius shines. In Day, the women’s bodies seem to radiate from within, as if made of the same substance as the sun. In The Night, the pale glow illuminating the sleepers comes from an invisible source, as if the canvas itself were emitting light. And in his portraits, faces are sculpted by violent contrasts—a cheek bathed in light, the other plunged into shadow.

This mastery of light is not merely technical. It is symbolic. For Hodler, light is truth, life, transcendence. Shadow is doubt, death, the unknown. By playing with these two forces, he creates images that seem both real and supernatural—as if his paintings were windows opening onto another world.

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05Scandal and glory

In 1891, when The Night was exhibited at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in Paris, it caused an uproar. Conservative critics saw it as a "degenerate," "pornographic," "macabre" work. Some Swiss newspapers called for its ban. Yet in Symbolist circles, it was met with enthusiasm. Gustave Kahn, the movement’s theorist, saw it as "a genius synthesis of mysticism and modernity." Odilon Redon, fascinated, wrote to Hodler to express his admiration.

This duality—rejected by some, adored by others—would mark his entire career. In 1900, he received the gold medal at the Paris World’s Fair for The Chosen One, but in 1915, his pacifist stance led to his boycott in Germany. In Switzerland, he was celebrated as a national hero, yet criticised for his "lack of patriotism" when he denounced the war.

Yet Hodler refused to be confined by labels. He would not be a mere "Swiss painter," just as he would not be a mere "Symbolist." His ambition was greater: he wanted to create an art that spoke to all, that transcended borders and eras. And perhaps that is why his paintings still move us so deeply today. They are not manifestos, illustrations, or stylistic exercises. They are questions posed to the universe—and to ourselves.

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06The legacy of a visionary

When Hodler died in 1918, Switzerland lost its greatest painter. But his influence was only beginning. The German Expressionists, from Kirchner to Schiele, drew inspiration from his angular figures and vibrant colours. The Cubists, from Picasso to Braque, adopted his rigorous geometry. And the Minimalists, from Donald Judd to Agnes Martin, saw in his parallelism a foreshadowing of their own quest for harmony.

Yet Hodler remains an artist difficult to classify. He is neither quite Symbolist nor quite modern. Neither entirely Swiss nor entirely European. Above all, he is a solitary figure—a man who spent his life searching for answers in the repetition of forms, in the symmetry of souls, in the light that pierces the darkness.

Today, his paintings hang in the world’s greatest museums. But it is perhaps in the small details that we understand him best. In the distorted reflection of a lake. In the shadow of a mountain. In the face of a dying woman who, nevertheless, seems more alive than ever. Hodler did not merely paint landscapes or allegories. He painted the invisible. And that is why he still speaks to us.