Hilma af Klint was a Swedish artist and mystic. She was associated with the style of Naïve Art (Primitivism). Af Klint was known for her naturalistic paintings of landscape and portraits.
Background
Af Klint was born in Solna Municipality, Stockholm, Sweden, on October 26, 1862. She was the fourth child of Captain Victor af Klint, a Swedish naval commander and a mathematician, and his wife Mathilda af Klint (née Sonntag). Hilma af Klint spent summers with her family at their manor Hanmora on the island of Adelsö in Lake Mälaren.
Hilma af Klint had a brother, Gustaf af Klint, and three sisters, Anna af Klint, Ida Haverman and Hermina af Klint.
Education
Hilma af Klint was a pupil of the Technical School, which is now known as Konstfack, or University of Arts, Crafts and Design. There she studied classical portraiture under the direction of Kerstin Cardon.
At the age of twenty, in 1882, af Klint entered the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. She continued her classical art training until 1887, studying mainly drawing, portrait and landscape painting. After graduating with honours, Hilma af Klint received a scholarship in the form of an art studio in the so-called "Atelier Building" (Ateljébyggnaden), owned by Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. It was there that her landscapes and portraits quickly became the source of her financial independence and stability.
Around this period of time, she began to study plants particularly from artworks conducted by the Swedish botanist Linnaeus, and animals.
A regular attendant of spiritual meetings, in 1904, af Klint had an otherworldly experience that brought changes into her work and life. During a séance, she heard a voice telling her to make paintings "on an astral plane" in order to "proclaim a new philosophy of life." This was essentially a celestial commission, "from an entity named Amaliel who told her to paint the 'immortal aspects of man.'"
Her works included the spiritual, political scientific aspects of art which have to be understood in the wider context. She was considerably secretive about her artworks. While she earned a living from her conventional art such as landscape and portrait in naturalistic style, her abstract paintings were for the eyes of a chosen few.
From 1906 at age 44, Hilma af Klint embarked on her most prolific phase creating her first series of abstract paintings. The work continued until 1915, carried out in two phases with an interruption between 1908 and 1912. By 1915, she had produced 193 artworks, each of which belonged to one of six series all over-arched by the larger body called Paintings for the Temple. They were created through the guidance of a higher power.
Through these paintings, af Klint wanted to illustrate the inconspicuous links that existed between two different worlds through which she tried to understand the depth of human understanding and nature.
After 1915, once the Paintings for the Temple had been completed, Hilma af Klint claimed that her "divine guidance" had come to an end. Soon, her approach to painting, mainly according to size and medium, changed. First of all, her oil paintings on canvas became smaller and then she started to experiment with watercolour painting. During 1917 she wrote over 1,200 pages entitled Studier över Själslivet (Studies of the Life of the Soul), detailing her experience as a metaphysical medium.
Her mother died in 1920, and subsequently, she put a hold on painting. After a year, she resumed painting, but did not go back to geometric abstracts. Hilma af Klint moved to Helsingborg, a coastal city in Southern Sweden, and between 1921 and 1930 often visited the Goetheanum in Switzerland (the world centre for the Anthroposophy Movement), turning to anthroposophy and painting with watercolours.
During this time, af Klint was highly concerned with the legacy of her own work, photographing and cataloguing her paintings, documenting her practice, writing in her journals and sketchbooks, and reviewing previous discoveries.
In old age, she insightfully understood that her artworks would not be appreciated by the audience of her time, so she carefully stored them away in her atelier left all of her creations to her nephew, Eric af Klint. She stipulated that they should only be made public twenty years after her death. However, even after her death, none of her abstract works had ever been shown to the public.
The Mahatmas Present Standing Point, Series II, No. 2a
Forwards, Parcifal Series, Group 2, Section 4: The Convolute of the Physical Plane
Wheat and Wormwood
The Dove, Nr. 12
Group V, no 2. Series WUS, Seven Pointed Star
Group IV, no 4. The Ten Largest
Group IV, no 4. The Ten Largest
Group IV, no 7. The Ten Largest, Adulthood
Group VII, serie US, no 7
Religion
Hilma af Klint developed her interest in spiritual and occult matters, following the death of her ten-year-old sister, Hermina, when Hilma was just eighteen years old. It was at this time that she first began attending séances, mystical group meetings, which aim was to create a dialogue with the spirit world.
Af Klint became interested in the spiritual theories developed across Europe, in particular Theosophy, founded by the Russian philosopher, Madame Blavatsky, Christian Rosenkreuz's philosophy and Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy was a spiritual movement developed by the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner; it aimed to define a "spiritual science", deeply rooted in Steiner's ideas that spirituality could be rationally understood through both science and art.
She met Rudolf Steiner in 1908, when he was on a visit to Stockholm. Steiner initiated Hilma af Klintin his own theories regarding the Arts, and had a certain influence on her paintings later in life. Several years later, in 1920, they met again at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, the headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society. From 1921 to 1930 she spent long periods at the Goetheanum.
Views
Quotations:
"The pictures were painted directly through me, without preliminary drawings and with great power. I had no idea what the pictures would depict and still I worked quickly and surely without changing a single brush-stroke."
"Life, is a farce if a person does not serve truth."
"The atom has at once limits and the capacity to develop. When the atom expands on the ether plane, the physical part of the earthly atom begins to glow."
"You have mystery service ahead, and will soon enough realize what is expected of you."
Membership
Hilma af Klint was a member of the Theosophical Society from its very foundation in Sweden in 1889. In 1896 af Klint joined for a short while the Edelweiss Society, leaving it the following year.
Af Klint, in collaboration with four female artist friends, founded The Five (de Fem) in 1896. Their group held séances every week until 1906, experimenting with free-flowing writing and drawing, and with other spontaneous, unplanned ways of creating. The group aimed to create a more intuitive and direct way of making art.
In 1920 she joined the Antroposophical Society.
Theosophical Society
,
Sweden
1889
Edelweiss Society
,
Sweden
1896 - 1897
The Five
,
Sweden
1896
Antroposophical Society
,
Sweden
1920
Personality
Hilma af Klint usually wore black.
The artist was a vegetarian.
Physical Characteristics:
Af Klint was small in height. She had blue eyes.
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Madame Blavatsky, Christian Rosencreutz
Artists
Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edvard Munch
Connections
Hilma af Klint never married, although she hoped to wed a man with an English name: Halliday. As her great-nephew, Johan af Klint, later said, "That never materialised and she was sorry and there was a crisis."
Father:
Victor af Klint
Mother:
Mathilda af Klint
Brother:
Gustaf af Klint
Sister:
Anna af Klint
Sister:
Ida Haverman
Sister:
Hermina af Klint
great-nephew :
Johan af Klint
nephew:
Eric af Klint
References
Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future
Accompanying the first major survey exhibition of the artist's work in the United States, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future represents the artist's groundbreaking painting series while expanding recent scholarship to present the fullest picture yet of her life and art.
2018
The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985
The seventeen essays in this provocative book provide a radical rethinking of abstraction, from the Symbolism that prefigured abstract art through the current manifestations of spiritual content in American and European painting.
1986
3x An Abstraction
3x an Abstraction presents the extraordinary work of three important women artists, Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, and Agnes Martin, whose innovative ideas and approaches to drawing had a significant impact on the history of modern abstraction.