By Emily Burkhart
July 2, 2023
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), Altarpiece No. 1, Group X, 1915, from the Altarpiece series.
Oil on gold on canvas. Private collection. Image courtesy of ArtReview.
The paintings were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brushstroke.
Hilma af Klint
An artist ahead of her time, Swedish artist and mystic Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) created deeply spiritual paintings exploring abstraction and the unconscious prior to the Abstract Expressionists and decades before the Surrealists. She is recognized today for creating among the first abstract works known in Western art history. Trained as an academic painter, af Klint produced her first abstract in 1906, predating the works of male artists Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian by some five years. She is now generally considered to be the pioneer and inventor of abstract art. Once little-known beyond art world circles, af Klint’s reputation has risen steadily since the first solo retrospective of her work in 2013 at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm which established her legacy.
Anonymous, Hilma af Klint in her studio on Hamngatan St. in Stockholm, Sweden,
ca. 1885. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Early Life and Education
Hilma af Klint was born on October 26, 1862, at Karlberg Palace in Solna, outside Stockholm, the fourth child of Mathilda Sonntag and Captain Victor af Klint, a Swedish naval commander. As a child, af Klint spent summers at the family manor home, Hanmora, on the island of Adelsö in Lake Mälaren where her family owned two farms. There, she developed a love of nature and natural forms, which would become an inspiration in her work. Af Klint exhibited an aptitude for art at an early age.
When the family moved to Stockholm in 1879, she began study of portraiture and landscape painting at the Tekniska Skolan (now Konstfack), the University of Arts, Crafts, and Design. She also took courses at the private art school of painter Kerstin Cardon (1843-1924).At age twenty, af Klint was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts where she continued her studies between 1882 and 1887, graduating with honors in 1887. That same year she won a prize in the Academy’s annual art competition for her oil painting from a human model, Andromeda at the Sea. Upon graduation, af Klint was awarded a scholarship in the form of a studio in the Atelier Building owned by the Royal Academy. The Atelier Building was located between Hamngatan and Kungsträdgården Streets in central Stockholm, the main cultural hub at the time. There she established herself as a respected artist, even serving briefly as secretary of the Association of Swedish Women Artists.
Hilma af Klint, Andromeda at the Sea, 1887. Oil on canvas. Image
courtesy of Facebook.
Hilma af Klint, Self-Portrait, ca. 1890. Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Wikimedia
Early Career
Af Klint earned critical recognition for her landscapes, botanical drawings, and portraits. This “conventional” work became the source of financial income, while mystical abstract paintings that she referred to as her “great work” remained a separate practice of which few had any knowledge. Attempts to exhibit these esoteric paintings in her lifetime were unsuccessful and remarks in her notebooks indicate that she felt that the world was not quite ready for the message they were intended to communicate. Af Klint exhibited her more conventional work though in more than two dozen exhibitions organized by the Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, the Swedish Association for Art, between 1886 and 1914. She also participated regularly in group exhibitions and traveled to Germany, Norway, Holland, Belgium and Italy.
Hilma af Klint, Eken (The Oak), n.d. Oil on canvas, 55 x 79 in. Image courtesy of Artnet.
Spiritual and Philosophical Awakening
Af Klint’s interest in abstraction and the unconscious came from her involvement in Spiritualism, the view that spirit is a prime element of reality and that the spirit exists as distinct from matter, or is the only reality. Popular at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Spiritualism was a quasi religious movement based on the belief that departed souls could interact with the living through séances, meetings at which people would attempt to communicate with the dead. In 1879, af Klint participated in her first séance in the circle of painter, photographer, and medium Bertha Valerius (1824-1895).
With the death of her younger sister, ten-year-old Hermina, in 1880, the spiritual dimensions of af Klint’s life grew rapidly. She soon became a medium herself and developed an interest in alchemy. From there, she became interested in Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and Anthroposophy, philosophies founded in the late nineteenth century maintaining that a knowledge of God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations. These modes of spiritual engagement were especially popular in artistic and literary circles as people sought to reconcile religious beliefs with scientific advances and a new awareness of the plurality of religions.
De Fem (The Five), 1896-1908
While still at the Academy of Fine Arts, af Klint befriended Anna Cassel, one of four women with whom she would establish De Fem (The Five), a group exploring spiritual realms through meditation and séances along with Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman, and Mathilda Nilsson, who had been members of the Edelweiss Society (Edelweiss Förbundet), a Stockholm association that combined Christian ideas,Theosophical teachings, and spiritualism. Also known as the Friday Group, De Fem was a spiritualist collective active between 1896 and 1908 that purported to receive mystical messages through a dial planchette (an instrument for recording spirit communications similar to a ouija board) or human trance medium.
Af Klint believed herself a mystic who received and shared enlightenment and was the vehicle for the transmission of spiritual information in the group. The women recorded their meetings in notebooks in the form of messages from higher spirits they called The High Masters (Högar Mästare) by way of spiritual beings named Amaliel, Ananda, and Gregor who acted as intermediaries for The High Masters with automatic writing and drawings long before the Surrealists who were also interested in these ideas. Af Klint’s artistic direction was profoundly changed following a séance in 1904 when she heard the voice of “Ananda” telling her to execute “astral paintings" in order to “proclaim a new philosophy of life.” In 1907, af Klint received a message claiming that she should be the leader of De Fem, but the other four members objected to this and the group ceased to work collectively, dissolving in 1908.
The Paintings for the Temple, 1906-1915
In 1906, at the age of 44, af Klint painted her first series of abstract paintings upon receiving a celestial message from the spiritual being “Amaliel” who offered her a commission to create works for a “Temple” depicting the “immortal aspects of man”. Created between 1906 and 1915, the series entitled The Paintings for the Temple consists of 193 paintings grouped within six subseries. Af Klint imagined installing her works in a spiral temple that sadly never came to fruition. This period was af Klint’s most prolific phase of painting. She kept meticulous notebooks documenting her artistic efforts with black and white photographs of The Paintings for The Temple series paired alongside watercolor sketches and notes explaining the letters and symbols in the paintings. The following six paintings provide an overall flavor of her work.
Primordial Chaos No. 7 (1906-1907)
Hilma af Klint, Primordial Chaos No. 7, 1906-1907, from the Paintings for the Temple series. Oil on canvas. Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden.
Image courtesy of The Art Story.
Primordial Chaos No. 7 (1906-1907) is one of 26 works that make up the first subseries of the Paintings for the Temple cycle, called Primordial Chaos, in which af Klint investigates the origin and primordial essence of the universe. The painting is rich with symbolism. At first glance, one sees a circular object bisected by a blue kite with yellow tassels with the letters W and U on either side against a blue and yellowish-green background. Sperm-like shapes swim inside the yellow halves while yellow sperm outside appear to penetrate the egg, indicating the moment of fertilization when the sperm meets the egg. For af Klint, the initial W represents man and matter whereas U stands for woman and the spiritual. Indeed, the Primordial Chaos series is also referred to as the “WU” series. Af Klint developed her own visual language here whereby blue tended to represent male and yellow female. When combined, blue and yellow create green, a harmony of opposites implying that marriage of polarity is spiritually important.
No. 7, Adulthood (1907)
Hilma af Klint, No. 7, Adulthood, 1907 from The Ten Largest series of the Paintings for the
Temple. Oil and tempera on paper and canvas. Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm,
Sweden. Image courtesy of The Art Story.
No. 7, Adulthood (1907) is one of ten monumental paintings, each some ten feet tall by seven feet wide, illustrating the phases of human life including childhood, youth, maturity, and old age from af Klint’s The Ten Largest series. This huge painting is composed of organic forms, letters and scrolling lines against a lilac background. Inspired by af Klint’s lifelong botanical studies, the central yellow shape resembles a flower bulb from which a bloom emerges. The overlapping circles that form an almond shape, called a vesica piscis, is an ancient symbol for the development towards unity and completion. The circular objects throughout are also symbols of unity and infinity. The floral theme is echoed in the red clover-esque curling form on the left and the black and red lined blossom floating within it.
Here again af Klint employs yellow as the female principle with blue and yellow making green as the harmonious merging of opposites.The yellow and white eyelet and hook forms represent masculinity and femininity. The snails in the upper left represent development and the striped, spiral shells evolution. Af Klint had a great interest in Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution as exposited in On the Origin of Species (1859) and “by the ways nature’s forms and plant growth are dictated by mathematical progression” according to art critic Adrian Searle.
Photo by Jerry Hardman-Jones, 2016. Four paintings from Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, 1907 including No. 7, Adulthood at “Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen,” Serpentine South Gallery, London. Image courtesy of the Serpentine Galleries.
Evolution, No. 16 (1908)
Hilma af Klint, Evolution, No. 16, 1908 from the Evolution series. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Image courtesy of Arthive.
Also known as the Seven-Pointed Star series, af Klint’s Evolution series explores abstraction, figuration, and religious iconography. In Christian tradition, the seven-pointed star is a symbol of protection with the seven points referring to the perfection of God and to the seven days of the creation story in the Bible. Evolution, No. 16 (1908) features a large black oval or egg shape horizontally bisected by a thin blue line. The circle configurations on either side of this line are in some ways mirror images of each other as one is light and the other dark. The black in the painting signifies power and protection, while red symbolizes passion, strength, and reproductive force. Here also U’s and W’s appear both singly and joined. Besides representing new life, the egg is an alchemical symbol of enlightenment and spiritual union.
Af Klint has repeated the theme of duality and opposing male/female elements as can be seen in the four-pointed stars and petal tendrils within the circles. In Christianity, the four-pointed star stands for truth, hope, and spirit, embodying the idea of spiritual revelation. The cross or ladder-esque structures on either side of the “egg” are further Biblical allusions. In addition, the circular and bud-like accents on the joined letters UW and WU above the egg and below as U and W singly are significant. The whitish color denotes purity, innocence, and protection whereas the soft pink ground connotes femininity and love. Inside the oval, the lowercase letters A and O also have spiritual and esoteric meaning. A represents One God, the breath of life, and unity while O stands for the all-seeing eye of God, wisdom, and understanding. Evolution, No. 16 was the last painting af Klint completed in 1908 before taking a four-year hiatus (1908-1912) to care for her elderly mother who had gone blind.
Tree of Knowledge, No. 1 (1913)
Hilma af Klint, Tree of Knowledge, No. 1, 1913 from the Tree of Knowledge series.
Watercolor on canvas. Image courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New
York, New York.
In a group of works from 1913 to 1915 titled the Tree of Knowledge, another biblical theme, af Klint took a more representational approach. Her green mushroom-shaped tree emerges from dark brownish-green soil inside a translucent brown circle resembling a pot or glass vase in Tree of Knowledge, No. 1. The “leaves” of the tree consist of a multitude of tiny, dotted brushstrokes that increase in size from the top down. At the tree’s crown, brown branches spread from an upside down goblet shape or mushroom cap that rests on top of the white trunk spanning the length of the tree. Af Klint’s color palette not only includes her signature masculine blue and feminine yellow components, but also white, pink, orange, red, and purple. Just as blue and yellow combine to form harmonious green, pink and red combine to create the rose pink seen in the sequence of interlocking lines that make up the roots of the tree. Pairs of doves, classic symbols of hope, peace, love, and the Holy Spirit, echo along the trunk among other symbols in the crown and the trunk. Also featured are two prominent pairs of yellow and blue structures just touching. The whole suggests fertility, new life, and growth.
The Swan, No. 1 (1914-1915)
Hilma af Klint, The Swan, No. 1, 1914-1915 from The Swan series. Oil on canvas. Hilma af Klint
Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden. Image courtesy of The Art Story.
Af Klint’s more figurative The Swan, No 1. (1914-1915), like Primordial Chaos, No. 7 (1906-1907), depicts a spiritual polarity of opposites and duality. Swans represent the ethereal and stand for completion in alchemical tradition. The black swan is female with the yellow webbed feet, eyes, and pink beak with yellow accents whereas the white swan above her is male with blue feet, eyes, and red beak with blue accents. Interestingly, the black female swan is against a white or masculine ground while the white male swan is on a black or feminine ground, the divided canvas reminiscent of the opposing black and white colors of a Chinese yin/yang symbol. The swans are united by the sensual touch of a wing tip and by the meeting of their beaks in the center of the picture plane, as though kissing. The pink and red colors of their beaks fuse together in a passionate union of opposing but equal male and female energies.
Photo by Helene Toresdotter, Moderna Museet, 2020. Installation view showing work from Hilma af Klint, The Swan, including The Swan, No. 1, 1914-1915 at “Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium,” Moderna Museet Malmö, Stockholm, Sweden. Image courtesy of Art Blart.
Altarpiece, No. 1 (1915)
Hilma af Klint, Altarpiece No. 1, Group X, 1915, from the Altarpiece series. Oil on
gold on canvas. Private collection. Image courtesy of ArtReview.
At first glance, one sees a pyramid shape against a black, starry night sky whose tip touches a large sun shape as though rising to the heavens. In cosmology, a pyramid represents the earth’s foundation at the bottom, and the pointed top represents the path to higher realms of consciousness, as can be seen in af Klint’s pyramid-shaped “altarpiece.” The golden sun with its cosmic rays and halo-shaped border can be interpreted as the light of God. Here, af Klint has deviated from the more figural painting of The Swan to a combination of abstract and representational components. The gradations of colors on the base that go from dark to light as they rise nearer the sun also remind one of the gradients on a color wheel. A line of gold discs down the center spanning the length of the pyramid decrease in size and change shape, from oval at the base to more circular in the center to oval again at the top, culminating in a last tiny oval or egg shape within a small black triangle. The discs are an ancient symbol of holiness, echoing the halo around the sun above the pyramid.
Af Klint completed her Paintings for the Temple cycle in 1915. The final group was the Altarpiece subseries that af Klint envisioned for installation inside the Temple that never materialized.
Afterwards, af Klint focused on watercolor botanical studies and geometric abstraction, paintings exploring scientific concepts and world religions. She also edited and revised her many artwork notebooks until her death.
Hilma af Klint, Altarpieces, Group X, 1915 at “Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings,” Art Gallery of New South Wales . Image courtesy of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, 2021.
Death
Although considered one of Sweden’s most esteemed artists today, Af Klint’s fall into obscurity may have been partially of her own doing. At her death at age 81 in 1944, it was found that af Klint, after years of discouragement, had stipulated in her will that her work not be exhibited publicly until twenty years following her death. She also insisted that no painting be sold separately, thus ensuring that her artworks could not become misunderstood commodities. Since she neither married nor had children (it is possible that she might have been covertly gay), Af Klint bequeathed the body of her work–over 1,200 paintings, 100 texts, and 26,000 pages of notes and sketches–to her nephew, Vice Admiral Erik af Klint (1901-1981) of the Swedish Navy.
The Hilma af Klint Foundation
It was not until January 1972, less than ten years before his own death at age 80, that Erik af Klint established The Hilma af Klint Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and managing the artistic legacy of his aunt. The Foundation encourages and assists academic research about Hilma af Klint. It also has a long-term agreement of cooperation with the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, confirming that works by Hilma af Klint are always shown in the collection.
Photo by Jenni Carter, 2021. Three paintings from Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, 1907 at
“Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings,” Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia. Image
courtesy of The Guardian.
International Recognition
Af Klint’s work remained largely unseen until 1986 when some of her work was included in a group exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Art entitled “The Spiritual in Art, Abstract Painting 1890-1985.” This exhibition proved that af Klint’s work predated that of other renowned abstract artists. But it was not until 2013 that she finally became more widely acclaimed when the Moderna Museet in Stockholm hosted the exhibition, “Hilma af Klint–A Pioneer of Abstraction,” that toured internationally through 2015. More recently, the Moderna Museet featured paintings from af Klint’s Ten Largest series, “Hilma af Klint: The Ten Largest” which ran from September 22, 2022–January 8, 2023. The first major solo exhibition in the United States devoted to af Klint was at New York’s Guggenheim Museum. “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future” ran from October 12, 2018–April 23, 2019, and had over 600,000 visitors, making it the most-visited exhibition in the museum's sixty-year history. Currently, the Tate Modern Gallery in London is hosting an exhibition featuring af Kilnt and her contemporary Piet Modrian in dialogue with each other. “Forms of Life: Hilma Af Klint & Piet Mondrian” opened April 20 and runs until September 3, 2023. Afterwards, the exhibition is traveling to the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in The Hague where it will be on view from October 7, 2023–February 25, 2024.
Photo by David Lomas, 2023. Paintings by Hilma af Klint at “Hilma Af Klint & Piet Mondrian:
Forms of Life,”Tate Modern, London. Image courtesy of Engelsberg Ideas.
For more information, check out the Hilma af Klint Foundation here. And, if you enjoyed learning about the wonderful Hilma af Klint, please share this article and encourage others to explore additional women artists.