Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint (1862- 1944) was a Swedish painter who is often credited for having established abstract art. Her work was not viewed by the public until 1986, however her paintings date back before other early abstract painters, like Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich. She feared that her paintings would not be understood, so requested that her abstract paintings weren’t displayed publically until 20 years after her death.

Af klint graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, 1887. She then produced and exhibited traditional style paintings, like landscapes, botanical drawings and portraits from her studio. After 1886, she began to break free from the traditions and conventional ways of painting she was taught, and instead included spiritual meanings within her work.

Hilma af Klint also formed a group called ‘The Five’ which was made up of her and four other female artists she had joined together. Together they would do séances as a way to communicate with spirits who they believed wanted to communicate through paintings. This lead to her experiments with writing and drawing. This was several decades in advanced to the Surrealists.

In 1905 Hilma af Klint completed a commission for an individual who ‘The Five’ entitled Amaliel. This was one of her most important collections of art, called ‘the Paintings for the Temple’. In this collection were 193 paintings, most of which were abstract, that were separated into smaller series. She wanted to portray an accord between juxtaposing topics, such as good and evil, the spiritual and material worlds, man and woman and religion and science. Some influences seen in these paintings are the discovery of electromagnetic waves and the spiritual ideas of Rudolf Steiner. Her spiritual ideas were depicted through motifs like shells, snakes, lilies and crosses.