The Geneva Museum of Art and History (MAH) holds more than a thousand works by Ferdinand Hodler, making it one of the most significant public collections of the artist’s paintings and drawings. Exceptionally, this collection also includes 241 sketchbooks and notebooks in which the painter, throughout his life, recorded both the flashes of inspiration and the mundane household reminders of his daily life.
Modest in nature, these small booklets—the size of the “milk notebooks” of yesteryear—constitute a veritable treasure trove for researchers and an inexhaustible source of information that sheds light on both the artist’s work and the man’s life and thoughts. A meticulous study of these notebooks has thus helped shed light on Hodler’s relationship with religion and spirituality.
This presentation aims to shed light on the history and nature of this remarkable body of documentary material, whose significance far exceeds that of a mere archive.