Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction
In the beginning of the 20th century, years before the dawn of abstract art in Russia and Europe, the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) made paintings that turned away from visible reality. Already in 1906, years before her colleagues Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevitj, she developed an abstract imagery that manages to feel relevant today. At the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, she is now being honoured with the retrospective Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction (curated by Iris Müller-Westermann), up to now the largest presentation of the artist’s work, featuring a total of 230 paintings and works on paper.
Hilma af Klint was influenced by contemporary spiritual movements like spiritism, theosophy and later anthroposophy. Through her paintings she wanted to visualize what the eye couldn’t see and communicate the various dimensions of human existence. Hilma af Klint attended séances already in the late 1870’s, and in 1896, after years of traditional art studies in Stockholm, she abandoned her portraits and landscapes in naturist styles to form the group “De Fem” (The Five) together with four other women. They made contacts with “high masters” from another dimension and practiced automatic writing – writing without consciously guiding the movement on the pen on paper. Decades before the Surrealists, she developed a form of automatic drawing, and many of those simple, yet impressive drawings on brown paper are on view for the first time at the Moderna Museet.
In the large series Paintings for the Temple the are references to organic forms taken from nature, as well as esoteric Christianity and Rudolf Steiner’s Rosicrucianism, her works growing more geometrical as the years go by. No wonder that this year’s curator of la Biennale di Venezia, Massimiliano Gioni, has chosen five of af Klint’s paintings to be represented in the main pavilion of the Biennale – entitled The Encyclopedic Palace – along with many other artists referring to the science of our nature.
In her will, Hilma af Klint wrote that her abstract works weren’t to be shown in public until at least 20 years after her death. She was convinced that their full meaning wouldn’t be understood until then, that her paintings carried messages to humanity for the future. With this retrospective, we think we’re finally there. 2013 is Hilma af Klint’s year.
Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction is on view at Moderna Museet Stockholm until May 26th 2013. The exhibition will then tour to Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (June 15th – October 6th 2013) and Museo Picasso Málaga, Málaga (October 21st 2013 – February 9th 2014).
Helena Nilsson Strängberg
