A New Synthesis in the Landscape Painting by Arkhip Kuindzhi and Ferdinand Hodler

Abstract

The article provides a comparative analysis of the landscape painting of the Russian artist Arkhip Kuindzhi (1842—1910) and the Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler (1953—1918). In the field of Euro­pean landscape painting of the 19th-20th centuries, these outstanding masters are noted both as aca­demic figures and as innovators. The cosmic vision of the Universe, the emotional perception of nature and high pictorial skill, as well as the passionate service to art, in many ways unite the creative works of A. Kuindzhi and F. Hodler. For the first time, Russian science takes such a view on the study of their work. By applying the formal-stylistic analysis and the iconographic method, it is revealed that there is a certain synchronicity in their movement from realism to synthetic images of nature in their evolutionary development. In their mature and later works, the realistic, romantic, symbolic features are intertwined in various syntheses. In their spacing solutions, the ornamentalism of Hodler is comparable to the decorativism of Kuindzhi. The artists intersect in the iconographic aspect, addressing to similar motifs, for example: a single tree, a group of trees, mountain peaks, sunsets. The artists’ works are comparable in terms of generalization, selection and application of rhythm in the organization of painting composition. There are ideas of the sublime and the “planetary” of the Universe in the landscapes of A. Kuindzhi and F. Hodler. The artists’ goal to create a genera­lized image of nature is correlated with the movement to a symbol. This comparative analysis is some kind of a bridge between Russian and Swiss cultures, and it confirms the idea that Kuindzhi and Hodler crea­ted the landscapes-ideas in which there were both a subjective vision of the Universe and an innovative painting form of images of nature. Their works influenced the development of European landscape painting in the 20th century.