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With a total of around 50 works this exhibition forms a small but exquisit highlight of this years programme. The well known works from our own collection are complemented by 30 loans from private collections, a large number of rarely-seen paintings from the most interesting phases of their work.

Together, Ferdinand Hodler, Cuno Amiet and Giovanni Giacometti form the biggest triumvirate of the 19th and 20th century. They were part of the European avant-gardes, and influenced modern Swiss art more than any other artists. Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) was an exemplary exhibition artist; even early in his career he exploited every opportunity to create a platform for himself by taking part in competitions and exhibitions. As a result of his creativity and originality he stirred up interest that neither the public nor his fellow artists could escape, and he also skilfully used the press to draw attention to himself. In 1904, with the 19th exhibition of the Vienna Secession, he became a celebrated artist, and the exhibition was a great success in terms of sales. As President of the Swiss Artists' Association GSMBA, over a decade he accumulated a wealth of cultural-political power, and went on to influence a whole generation of artists with his work, particularly his landscape painting.

Cuno Amiet (1868–1961): Sitzendes Mädchen, 1915

Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 98.5 cm
Kunstmuseum Luzern, Depositum der Bernhard Eglin-Stiftung
Foto: © Kunstmuseum Luzern

Click on image to enlarge.

Cuno Amiet (1868-1961) was friends with his older colleague, and regarded him very highly. They first met in 1893 at the annual assembly of the GSMBA in Berne. Their contacts intensified, and Hodler even suggested they share a studio, although Amiet rejected this idea. Giovanni Giacometti (1868-1933), whom Amiet had met while training in Munich, met Hodler in 1898. That same year saw not only the exhibition organised by all three artists together in the Künstlerhaus in Zurich, but also the plans for a communal project. For the Paris World's Fair they were to produce a vast Alpine panorama, which Giovanni Segantini, Giacometti's friend and mentor, would also have been involved in. But the project failed for financial reasons.

The two younger artists, who shared a studio in Paris, competed with their great idol Hodler, who in turn took a keen interest in their careers. Increasingly, however, Amiet in particular faced accusations of being too much in awe of Hodler. By following the parallelism of Hodler's influence he soon came to be seen as a disciple, even though he avoided, for example, Hodler's rows of symbolist figures of women, and instead placed women walking side by side in costume in realistic settings. Amiet kept his distance not only in a personal sense - he increasingly built up an international network of his own, and in 1907 he became a member of 'Die Brücke' - but also in an artistic one, concentrating on his own independent abilities. Even though his art combined German and French characteristics, in line with his training in Munich and Paris, he increasingly focused the painterly language that he saw as being embodied in the works of the artists of Pont-Aven, with whom he himself had spent a year, and in exemplary fashion in the work of van Gogh and Cézanne. His painting is defined by pure colour, and freed of everything anecdotal. As a result, Amiet made a significant contribution to the renovation of Swiss painting. He did not create an iconography of his own, as Hodler did in his late work, but reinterpreted the traditional themes with new formal means.

Giovanni Giacometti (1868–1933): Autoritratto, 1923

Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 61 cm
Kunstmuseum Luzern, Depositum der Gottfried Keller-Stiftung
Foto: © Kunstmuseum Luzern

Click on image to enlarge.

In this respect Giovanni Giacometti was closer to him, with his interest in the intensification of effects of colour and light. It was in his home in the Bergell mountains that the artist also found both the atmospheric impressions of nature and the simple motifs of his immediate surroundings - gardens or details of landscapes, the people around him, scenes of village life - which he inimitably imbued with an Impressionistic light of shimmering reflections and colourful shadows. Giacometti and Amiet had a lifelong friendship, which is also expressed in an intense correspondence.

The greatest affinity between the three artists may be seen primarily in their intense contacts and creative exchange around the turn of the century. Their engagement with each other's work was to the mutual benefit of all three artists. Stylistically, however, they went different ways, and their careers - Amiet survived Giacometti by almost 30, Hodler by over 40 years - make the differences between them clear. They all shared a quality of openness, and the ambition to respond to the artistic movements in Europe and to help to shape them. The precise observation of their respective careers and artistic development was an expression of their relationship as colleagues, their personal sympathy and involvement in family matters a confirmation of their friendship.

Kuratiert von Christoph Lichtin.

Supported by: LGT Bank (Switzerland)