SUCCESS
AWAY FROM HOME

WHAT UNITES FERDINAND HODLER, FÉLIX VALLOTTON, ALBERTO GIACOMETTI AND MERET OPPENHEIM IS THAT THEY ALL ACHIEVED FAME OUTSIDE THEIR NATIVE LAND.

While Switzerland’s art scene in the first half of the 20th century often clung to academic traditions, the great European capitals sparked explosive innovation. Above all Paris – but also Berlin, Munich and Vienna – exerted a massive attraction.

Félix Vallotton was no man of grand gestures, yet his art – precise and often unsettlingly still – caused a sensation in fin-de-siècle Paris. His woodcuts and paintings enthral with their cool detachment and psychological depth – as seen in the magically evocative ‘La Seine aux Andelys’ of 1924, offered in our June auction. Among the Nabis circle of Bonnard and Vuillard, Vallotton soon emerged as a keen observer as well as something of an anomaly. He adopted French citizenship, exhibited at the prestigious Salon and became part of the cultural elite. The École de Paris was his intellectual home, even as he retained his Swiss perspective – sober, precise, tinged with subtle irony.

Alberto Giacometti’s rise to become one of the 20th century’s most influential artists is inseparable from France, and more specifically Paris. As early as the 1920s, the young artist settled in Montparnasse and joined the vibrant Surrealist circle around André Breton, the city and its inhabitants providing him with a rich echo chamber. Likewise, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Meret Oppenheim and later Jean Tinguely (several of whose works are included in our Post-War & Contemporary auction on 26 June) discovered creative freedom on the banks of the Seine. This detour eventually resulted in lasting recognition back in Switzerland.

In the German-speaking world, Ferdinand Hodler was a sought-after artist: controversial, celebrated, collected. As early as the late 19th century, his radical formal language and monumental treatment of existential themes made waves beyond the Alps. In Munich – then a nexus of European art – he instigated debate: while conservatives initially rejected his work, progressive circles soon hailed him as a pioneer of modernity. The Secessionists in Vienna and Berlin found in him a kindred spirit – an artist who combined the spirit of Symbolism with a powerful pictorial language that placed humanity at the heart of a new world-view. In Vienna he encountered a soulmate in Gustav Klimt. Their common pursuit: the quest for meaning beyond the visible world. Hodler’s late-career painting ‘View into infinity’ of circa 1914 exemplifies this lifelong search.