Hilma af Klint
Kelp Custard, Dragon Fruit Preserves Swirl, White Wine Waffles, Five-flower Syrup, Fig Popped Sorghum
Born in Sweden in 1862 to a family of naval officers and map makers, Hilma af Klint grew up between the nature rich Islands of Sweden and academic-focused Stockholm. At an early age, Hilda was interested in botany and mathematics and studied portraiture and landscape painting. In 1887, she graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts with honors and was granted studio space above the artist hub, Blanch’s Café. Money from her academy-approved paintings supported her. In 1888, Hilma won a prize for her version of Andromeda at the Sea. While most depictions show the Nubian princess in distress waiting to be rescued from the sea monster, Hilma shows a contemplative and intrepid woman. Hilma might have based Andromeda’s expression on that of St. George from the towering wooden sculpture inside of Stockholm’s St. Nicholas Cathedral.
Two years before Hilma entered the academy, her younger sister Hermina died, which led Hilma to spiritualism, specifically Theosophy and Anthroposophy. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, these movements fascinated many, especially women who couldn’t find leadership roles in traditional religious spaces. In 1896, Hilma and four other women created The Five. They hosted séances in which the women would record messages from spirits the group called The High Masters. These messages were often translated into abstract-like automatic drawings. At the turn of the century, Hilma received the message that she was to paint large scale paintings for the “Temple.”
In 1906, four years before Wassily Kandinsky produced his first known abstract work, Hilma, age 44, began working on the Temple project. The collection, made up of several series from Primordial Chaos to Tree of Life and from The Swan to The Seven-Pointed Star, are now considered the first abstract paintings in Western art. Hilma’s paintings are colorful, geometric, and include explosive spirals, circles, and natural forms. They consider duality, explore scientific research, and touch on religion. Like St. George channeling God’s strength in order to slay the dragon, Hilma’s hand was guided by a force. Her work channeled something larger and while Hilma didn’t know what to expect, she would never correct a brush stroke.
During the decade Hilma worked on the Temple paintings, she met Rudolf Steiner, the head of the Anthroposophical society. After an invitation to see her accomplishments, an aloof Steiner told Hilma that her paintings could not be understood by her contemporaries and only in half a century would her work make sense to the public. This harsh statement caused Hilma to take a four year hiatus from painting.
While it is true that Hilma was relatively unknown in the art world until recently, it is a myth that she never shared her work during her lifetime. Starting as early as 1888, Hilma participated in group exhibitions, traveling as far as Italy. In 1928, he presented pictures of her large project in London to the World Conference on Spiritual Science. Between seances, painting, and traveling, Hilma took care of her widowed and blind mother. In 1918, Hilma moved to the small island village of Munsö with her mother and her mother’s nurse, who became Hilma’s life partner.
After a streetcar accident in 1944, Hilma died at age 81. Even though Hilma left behind over 1200 paintings and over 100 diaries, all of her correspondence was destroyed at her request. According to her obituary, she was a failed artist. 80 years later, Hilma’s work is finally getting international recognition. In 1931, Hilma had designed a white spiral-shaped temple to house her works on a Southern island. The swirling shrine of paintings was never realized, but in 2019, the white concrete Guggenheim Museum in New York City hosted a retrospective of Hilma af Klint along its helical ramp. “Hilma Af Klint: Paintings for the Future” became the most visited exhibit in the museum’s history.
