Hilma af Klint (; 26 October 1862 – 21 October 1944) was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings are considered to be among the first major abstract works in Western art history. A considerable body of her work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian. She belonged to a group called "The Five", a circle of women inspired by Theosophy who shared a belief in the importance of trying to contact the "High Masters", often through séances.Bashkoff, T., ed., et al., Hilma Af Klint (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2018). Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.Bashkoff, Tracey, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, ArtBook, 2018.
Early life
Hilma af Klint was the fourth child of Mathilda () and Captain Victor af Klint, a Swedish naval commander. The family surname is 'af Klint', af being a Swedish nobiliary particle. She spent summers with her family at their manor, "Hanmora", on the island of Adelsö on Lake Mälaren. In these idyllic surroundings, she came into contact with nature at an early age. Her experience of natural forms became an inspiration in her work, and she later lived on Munsö, an island next to Adelsö.
Af Klint showed a great interest in mathematics and botany and an ability in visual art. After the family moved to Stockholm, she studied at Tekniska skolan (Technical School, now Konstfack) in Stockholm, where she studied portraiture and landscape painting.
Af Klint was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at the age of twenty. Between 1882 and 1887, she studied portrait painting, botanical drawing, and landscape painting. She graduated with honors and was granted a scholarship in the form of a studio in the "Atelier Building" (Ateljébyggnaden) owned by the Academy of Fine Arts between Hamngatan and Kungsträdgården in central Stockholm, which was the main cultural hub in the Swedish capital at that time. The same building also held Blanch's Café and Blanch's Art Gallery, where conflict arose between the conventional views of the Academy of Fine Arts and the opposition movement of the Art Society (Konstnärsförbundet), inspired by the French plein air painters. Af Klint began working in Stockholm, gaining recognition for her landscapes, botanical drawings, and portraits. Her conventional painting was a source of income, but her abstract remained a separate practice.Cattelan, M., Gioni, M., & Subotnick, A., eds., Charley, Issue 5 (New York: D.A.P., 2007).
Spiritual and philosophical ideas
In 1880, af Klint's younger sister Hermina died. Around this time, the spiritual dimension of her life had begun to develop. Af Klint's interest in abstraction and symbolism grew from her involvement in spiritism, which was very much in vogue at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Her experiments in spiritual investigation started in 1879. She became interested in the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky and the philosophy of Christian Rosenkreuz. In 1908, she met Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Anthroposophical Society, who was visiting Stockholm. Steiner introduced her to his theories regarding the arts, and appears to have influenced her paintings later in life. Several years later, in 1920, she met Steiner again at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, the headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society. Between 1921 and 1930, she spent long periods at the Goetheanum.
Af Klint's work can be understood in the wider context of the modernist search for new forms in artistic, spiritual, political, and scientific systems at the beginning of the twentieth century. Other artists during this same period, including Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, Fidus, and the French Les Nabis, were inspired by the Theosophical Society.
The works of af Klint are mainly spiritual, and her artistic work is a consequence of this.Hilma af Klint – Painting the Unseen, Serpentine Galleries, 2016. , p. 24. She felt the abstract work and the meaning within were so groundbreaking that the world was not ready to see it, so she directed that the work remain unseen until twenty years after her death.Sinclair, V., Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: The Cut in Creation (London: Routledge, 2021), p. 49.
Work
At the Academy of Fine Arts she met Anna Cassel, the first of the four women with whom she later worked in "The Five" (De Fem), a group of artists who shared her ideas. The other members were Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman, and Mathilda Nilsson. The Five began their association as members of the Edelweiss Society, which embraced a combination of the Theosophical teachings of Helena Blavatsky and spiritualism. All of The Five were interested in the paranormal and regularly organized spiritistic séances. They opened each meeting with a prayer, followed by a meditation, a Christian sermon, and a review and analysis of a text from the New Testament, followed by a séance. They recorded in a book a completely new system of mystical thought, in the form of messages from higher spirits called The High Masters ("Höga Mästare"). One Master, Gregor, announced, "All the knowledge that is not of the senses, not of the intellect, not of the heart but is the property that exclusively belongs to the deepest aspect of your being ... the knowledge of your spirit".Heiser, J., & Higgie, J., eds., Frieze: Contemporary Art and Culture, Vols 88–91 (London: Durian Publications, 2004).
Through her work with The Five, Hilma af Klint created experimental automatic drawing as early as 1896, leading her toward an inventive geometric visual language capable of conceptualizing invisible forces of the inner and outer worlds.Hilma af Klint, Hilma af Klint and The Five's Sketchbooks: No. S2, S6 and S13: 5 October 1896 – 10 January 1906 (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2022). She explored world religions, atoms, and the plant world, and wrote extensively about her discoveries. Af Klint created metaphors to express the messages she was receiving from the High Masters, the spirits who the artist believed used her as a conduit. As she became more familiar with this form of expression, af Klint was "assigned" by the High Masters to create the paintings for the "Temple", although she said that never understood what the "Temple" referred to.
Af Klint said that she felt she was being directed by a force that would literally guide her hand. She wrote in her notebook:
The pictures 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 brush stroke.
In 1906, at the age of 44, af Klint painted her first series of abstract paintings.
The works for the Temple were created between 1906 and 1915, carried out in two phases, with an interruption between 1908 and 1912. Art critic Daniel Birnbaum argues that Anna Cassel likely contributed to af Klint's Temple paintings. As af Klint discovered her new form of visual expression, she developed a new artistic language. Her painting became more autonomous and more intentional. The spiritual would continue to be the main source of creativity throughout the rest of her life.
The collection for the Temple comprises 196 paintings grouped within several sub-series. The major paintings, dated 1907, are large: each painting measures approximately 240 × 320 cm. This series, called The Ten Largest, describes the stages of life, from early childhood to old age.
Quite apart from their diagrammatic purpose, the paintings have a freshness and a modern aesthetic of tentative line and hastily captured image, such as a segmented circle, a helix bisected and divided into a spectrum of lightly painted colors. The artistic world of af Klint is infused with symbols, letters, and words. The paintings often depict symmetrical dualities or reciprocities: up and down, in and out, earthly and esoteric, male and female, good and evil. The color choice throughout is metaphorical: blue stands for the female spirit, yellow for the male one, and pink/red for physical/spiritual love. The Swan and the Dove, names of two series of the Paintings for the Temple, are also symbolic, representing, respectively, transcendence and love. Understood as gates to other dimensions, her paintings call for interpretation on a narrative, esoteric, and artistic level while evoking primordial geometry and humanistic motifs.
When af Klint had completed works for the Temple, the "spiritual guidance" ended, but she continued to pursue abstract painting independent of any "external influence". The paintings for the Temple were mostly oil paintings, but she now also used watercolors. Her later paintings are significantly smaller in size. She painted among others a series depicting the standpoints of religions at various stages in history, as well as representations of the duality between physical being and its equivalence on an esoteric level. As af Klint pursued her artistic and esoteric research, it is possible to perceive the influence of the artistic theories developed by the Anthroposophical Society. Through her life, af Klint would seek to understand the mysteries that she had felt through her work. She produced more than 150 notebooks containing her thoughts and studies.
In 1908, af Klint met Rudolf Steiner. In one of their few remaining letters, she asked Steiner to visit her in Stockholm to see the Paintings for the Temple series, 111 paintings in total. She wrote in her personal notebook:
The execution of the work began a few years before Dr. Steiner first came to Sweden, and when I heard about him, it was immediately clear to me that he was the one who would confirm what I had perceived. Under the guidance of one, or perhaps several intelligences, the work is executed in a number of painted pictures, some very small, some very large. This logically constructed work contains an explanation of the evolution of mankind over vast periods of time. There are two reasons why I wish to interest the Anthroposophical Society in this work, namely, my absolute belief in the authenticity of the inspiration, and Dr. Steiner’s confirmation of it when, 14 or 15 years ago, he looked at the first two series then completed, on which he made a detailed explanation. Since then the work has continued, and this year I have once again personally appealed to Dr. Steiner to find out about the work. Whether it should be preserved, or whether it should be destroyed. The answer was, that it would be detrimental to let it disappear and that it could be used and useful.