Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)

ANNUAL REPORT • A 2008. ÉV - PÉTER ÚJVÁRI: Ferdinand Hodler—A Symbolist Vision

7 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE EXHIBITION respect. He was given prestigious mural commissions in both Switzerland and Germany, and was asked to design the 50-franc banknote. When he died his funeral resembled one accorded to a statesman. Finally, some twenty years after his death, he was categorised as a "Germanic" artist par excellence, and a Swiss national idol

—only to fall into oblivion with the international public at the same time.

1 The exhibition in Berne and Budapest was facilitated by the efforts of recent Swiss art history research to unlearn inherited interpretations and to reconsider Hodler's work in his own historical and artistic context. These efforts date back to the late 1980s, when Jura Brüschweiler first gathered the biographical facts and Oskar Bätschmann first analyzed Hodler's art in a broader artistic and theoretical context. Based on these groundbreaking studies and the knowledge accumulated since then, the Swiss Institute for Art Research (Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft) is now preparing a seven-volume critical catalogue which is expected to be completed in 2014.

2 The exhibition in Berne and Budapest, organized in close cooperation with SIAR and featuring some 160 works providing an accurate picture of the artist's