Hilma af Klint – Gifts to the Future

A visionary gift meets a classical painting education . Spirituality is paired with open-mindedness.

In Hilma af Klint's work, opposites merge and merge. The result is a body of work far ahead of its time, which will only be revealed several decades after the painter's death.

The abstract paintings of the Swedish artist are a gift to the future, offering the viewer insights into their own soul.

From realism to abstraction

Hilma af Klint was born in 1862 at Karlberg Castle near Stockholm into a noble family of naval officers. From a young age, she was interested in cartography, botany, natural sciences, and painting. With the support and encouragement of her father, she was one of the first women to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm.

For five years she studied realistic drawing, portraiture, and landscape painting . After her highly successful graduation, she moved into a studio in the academy's studio building and, quite in keeping with the times, mainly produced landscape paintings and botanical drawings.

At the age of 44, the Swedish painter fundamentally changed her style and began to create works of art that could not be assigned to any of the art styles known at the time.

She created abstract paintings – and that in 1906, well before Wassily Kandinsky and other artists who are still considered the originators of abstract painting. Nevertheless, she continued to exhibit landscapes and portraits, as her abstract works found no place in the art world of the time.

Her work only gained recognition decades after her death . Hilma af Klint, like other famous female painters, was largely ignored for a long time by the then male-dominated art world.

A look into the future

Hilma af Klint 's abstract art remained hidden from the public for several decades. The artist herself consciously chose this secrecy. Due to the lack of success of her abstract artworks and the lack of understanding among her contemporaries, she decided to bequeath her work to the future.

She designed a temple that visitors would spiral through, culminating in a dome that would offer a view of the stars. This vision of the artist was realized with the completion of the Guggenheim Museum in 1959. Finally, in October 2018, the Swedish painter's great dream came true.

The exhibition “Paintings for the Future” attracted over 600,000 people to the Guggenheim Museum , all of whom came to admire the work of Hilma af Klint.

Only in our century have the impressive paintings of this Swedish artist, who was far ahead of her time, received the attention and recognition they deserved. It was only with the successful exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 2018 that the world seemed to be paying her the respect she deserved.

In 2019, the film "Beyond the Visible" by Halina Dryschka , which tells the life story of the Swedish painter.

In 2020, the first biography in book form, "Amazing Humanity" by Julia Voss, . Exhibitions and museums around the globe are now showcasing her works, which have been hidden from the world for so long.

Visionary and pioneer of abstraction

The Swedish painter can rightly be considered a pioneer of abstract art . She created her first abstract works as early as 1906, several years before her contemporaries Wassily Kandinsky , Piet Mondrian , and Kazimir Malevich . She shared with them an interest in spirituality , which significantly influenced the work of these and other contemporary artists.

They all aimed to transcend the boundaries of the physical world and depict a spiritual world that had previously been invisible. The then newly discovered quantum physics and the theory of relativity also had a significant influence on the work of many painters, gradually shaking the prevailing worldview.

In her abstract works, Hilma af Klint initially developed a predominantly organic formal language, which later became increasingly geometric. However, this work was not made accessible to the public during her lifetime – she feared that her contemporaries were not yet ready to grasp the meaning of the paintings. She stipulated in her will that the work should only be revealed 20 years after her death.

The artist died in 1944, but her work was not exhibited until 1986. The exhibition "The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art subsequently traveled to Chicago and The Hague, marking the beginning of her international recognition .

Hilma af Klint was concerned with uniting opposites in her works and setting forms in motion. She wanted to dissolve rigid systems of order, entrenched patterns of thought, and dualistic worldviews, and to unite the contrasts.

Mediator between times

Hilma af Klint created abstract art that did not adhere to any then-known style. Her paintings contain elements that can be seen as a premonition of future styles. They feature colors and motifs strongly reminiscent of Pop Art or Minimal Art , but also incorporate mystical symbols from around 1600.

The Swedish artist seemed to have been years, sometimes even decades, ahead of her male colleagues due to her visionary gifts. Nevertheless, the success of her work was a long time coming. Even the Museum of Modern Art in New York made no mention of the Swedish artist in its 2012 “Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925”

In 2013, an exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm offered the first comprehensive overview of the Swedish artist's life's work. Following a review of her estate, a large number of paintings, works on paper, and even notebooks were made accessible to the public for the first time. The notebooks offered unprecedented, intimate insights into the artist's thoughts and visions.

The exhibition was shown not only in Stockholm, but also at the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin, and in Malaga. Its enormous success, attracting over a million visitors, led to a questioning of the previously dominant narrative in art history. The significant role of the Swedish painter in abstract art increasingly came into focus.

Hilma af Klint and other famous female painters were seemingly deliberately pushed out of the then male-dominated art scene – perhaps because contemporary male artists saw the visionary as a great competitor and threat.

A treasure trove for the future

At the age of 70, in 1932, the artist decided that her works should remain sealed for 20 years after her death. Nearly all of her notebooks, as well as all works intended to be opened only at her specified time, were marked with the code +x. Hilma af Klint left her nephew approximately 26,000 pages of notes and 15,000 paintings, along with instructions on how they should be exhibited.

Her legacy includes a meticulously planned system for future exhibitions . Only decades after her death was this treasure to be revealed to the world, traveling the globe to be exhibited in museums worldwide. Klint's abstract paintings were intended to tell future generations what her contemporaries could not comprehend.

Artist, medium and mystic

The work of the Swedish painter is strongly influenced by mysticism and spirituality . She read the ancient writings of famous mystics and, together with other women, regularly conducted séances. Séances were widespread in artistic circles during Klint's lifetime and an integral part of the daily lives of many artists and scholars.

Theosophy and Anthroposophy provided impetus for artistic creation and offered a great source of inspiration, not only for Klint but also for other artists of her time. The Swedish artist became a member of the Theosophical Society in 1889. In 1896, she and four other women founded the "Friday Group ," also known as "The Five."

The women met every Friday for spiritual gatherings. There they prayed, studied the New Testament, meditated, and held séances. They practiced automatic writing and mediumistic drawing. According to their own accounts, the women made contact with spiritual beings whom they called "The High Ones.".

After years of esoteric training, Hilma af Klint, at the age of 43, began work on the "Paintings for the Temple ," which would forever change the course of her life. The "Paintings for the Temple" comprise 193 works and represent one of the first examples of abstract painting in Europe.

In 1908, Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy, gave several lectures in Stockholm, Sweden, and visited the studio of Hilma af Klint, where he viewed some of her early abstract paintings. In 1913, Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society, of which Klint became a member in 1920. She remained a member until her death.

Hilma af Klint described her painting style as mediumistic . She addressed her spirits by name and said that her paintings were painted directly through her. She heard voices speaking to her from other dimensions, giving her the courage to continue her work.

What I needed was courage. And I found it through the influence of the spiritual world, which bestowed upon me rare and wonderful guidance.”

Unifying contrasts

Through her art, the painter wanted to humanity the gifts she herself had received, thus contributing to a greater and better world. Despite her spiritual side, the Swedish artist was not a withdrawn, otherworldly person. On the contrary, she was worldly, open, enterprising, and sociable.

She combined opposites and contrasts in her personality, which is reflected in her work.

Hilma af Klint lived an open and erotic life, expressing her sexuality and feeling attracted to women. She traveled extensively, including to Italy, Amsterdam, and London. She also moved around her native Sweden a great deal, meeting many people and exploring her life in a variety of ways.

She herself said that marriage and family life were not for her, and that a force flowed within her that constantly drove her forward. She had a different relationship to the present and the future than most of her contemporaries and was aware that she was ahead of her time. With her art, she wanted to reach not only people in the present, but above all, people in the future.

Buy pictures by Hilma af Klint

Original works by the artist are primarily sold at art auctions . The most expensive work by Hilma af Klint was auctioned on November 28, 2020, at auction house for €54,000 (approximately $64,604) . However, most works at past auctions in recent years have been priced between $1,000 and $5,000. Nevertheless, a significant increase in sales prices has been observed over the last two to three years.

Besides art auctions, works by the Swedish artist are also available galleries artnet , the leading information source for the international art market .

Reproductions are significantly cheaper get posters online from the Swedish print-on-demand wall art provider, Posterland.se

Current Exhibitions

Currently, 128 works by the Swedish painter are on display under the title "The Secret Paintings" at the City Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand . Larger exhibitions are held several times a year in various countries.

Individual works by the artist can be found in many countries around the world. For example, one work is currently Liljevalchs Museum in Stockholm Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has nine works, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin six, the Arken Museum in Ishøj eight, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York one. The Moderna Museet in Stockholm houses a total of 16 works by Hilma af Klint.

Current exhibition dates can be found on the Hilma af Klint Foundation website .