MONTREAL, CANADA.- Until Spring 2004, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presents, in the Prints and Drawings Gallery, a selection of twenty-two drawings of Ferdinand Hodler (1853- 1918) from its permanent collection. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is fortunate to have more than three hundred drawings by Hodler - one of the largest collections in the world - thanks to the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Michal Hornstein. Many of these drawings were created late in the artist’s life, associated with major mural and painting commissions. Hilliard T. Goldfarb, curator of Old Masters at the Museum, has selected these works. Admission is free.

A painter and printmaker, this renowned Swiss modern artist was born in Bern in 1853 and studied in Geneva with a former pupil of Ingres and Corot. This early training contributed to his appreciation of the expressive potential of line drawing. Travel through Switzerland and Spain exposed him to such artistic influences as Dürer, Holbein and Raphael.

In his earliest paintings of the 1880s, Hodler worked in a realistic style, confronting the social issues of his age. However, an artist of mystical leanings, poor and witness to the devastation of tuberculosis - which led eventually to the death of his entire family - he was already moving towards a symbolist language by the end of that decade. His first painted masterwork, Night (1889-90), parallels sleep with death. A visit to Paris in 1891 introduced him to the symbolist group of artists around Gauguin, confirming and influencing the future direction of his art. His works of the 1900s became much more life-affirming and optimistic. Hodler evolved his own powerful means of expression through strong rhythmic patterns and a tight linear structure, often repeating and echoing lines in his compositions. The artist’s figures are frequently presented in interrelated poses, suggestive of ritualistic dance or procession. He was fascinated by dance as an active, musical expression of emotion, and his inimitable use of rhythmically repeated, energized lines is perfectly suited to pen drawing. He termed this style "parallelism." Hodler exhibited at the Vienna Secession as well as in Munich, Berlin and Geneva, achieving recognition and success as a portraitist, landscapist and painter of symbolic allegories.