Hilma af Klint's daring abstractions exert a mystical magnetism

When Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died in 1944 at the age of 81, she left behind more than 1,000 paintings and works on paper that she had kept largely private during her lifetime. Believing the world was not yet ready for her art, she stipulated that it should remain unseen for another 20 years. But only in recent decades has the public had a chance to reckon with af Klint's radically abstract painting practice--one which predates the work of Vasily Kandinsky and other artists widely considered trailblazers of modernist abstraction. Her boldly colorful works, many of them large-scale, reflect an ambitious, spiritually informed attempt to chart an invisible, totalizing world order through a synthesis of natural and geometric forms, textual elements and esoteric symbolism.

Accompanying the first major survey exhibition of the artist's work in the United States, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future represents her groundbreaking painting series while expanding recent scholarship to present the fullest picture yet of her life and art. Essays explore the social, intellectual and artistic context of af Klint's 1906 break with figuration and her subsequent development, placing her in the context of Swedish modernism and folk art traditions, contemporary scientific discoveries, and spiritualist and occult movements. A roundtable discussion among contemporary artists, scholars and curators considers af Klint's sources and relevance to art in the 21st century. The volume also delves into her unrealized plans for a spiral-shaped temple in which to display her art--a wish that finds a fortuitous answer in the Guggenheim Museum's rotunda, the site of the exhibition.

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) is now regarded as a pioneer of abstract art. Though her paintings were not seen publicly until 1987, her work from the early 20th century predates the first purely abstract paintings by Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich.

New research and cultural context on the life and art of Hilma af Klint

The 2018 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, introduced the general public to the abstract mystical masterpieces of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). Based on a seminar held at the Guggenheim Museum at the opening of this acclaimed exhibition, this volume compiles the insights of the seminar's contributors alongside reproductions of works, archival photographs and images from af Klint's journals.

Hilma af Klint: Visionary explores the social and spiritual movements that appeared at the turn of the 20th century, inspiring the pioneers of modernism and abstract art: Kandinsky, Mondrian, Malevich and af Klint. What was the zeitgeist that inspired such an eruption in abstract art? What were the conditions that created Hilma af Klint? Academics and experts Julia Voss, Tracey Bashkoff, Isaac Lubelsky, Linda Dalrymple Henderson and Marco Pasi each take a different approach. Voss analyzes af Klint's biography, pinpointing five important events in her life; Bashkoff presents her connection to Hilla Rebay and her plans for the building of a temple; Lubelsky traces the origins of theosophy in New York; Henderson examines the occult and science; and Pasi considers esotericism's changing role in culture.

Hilma af Klint studied at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm where she was part of the first generation of female students. Up until the beginning of the century, she painted mainly landscapes and detailed botanical studies. Her work from this period was that of a young artist of her time who meticulously observed the world around her. But, like many of her contemporaries, af Klint was also interested in the invisible relationships that shape our world, believing strongly in a spiritual dimension. She joined the Theosophical Society, and, with four fellow female members who together called themselves The Five, began to study mediumship. Between 1906 and 1915, purportedly guided by a higher power, af Klint created 193 individual works that, in both scale and scope of imagery, are like no other art created at that time. Botanically inspired images and mystical symbols, diagrams, words, and geometric series, all form part of af Klint's abstract language. These abstract techniques would not be seen again until years later.

Notes and Methods presents facsimile reproductions of a wide array of af Klint's early notebooks accompanied by the first English translation of af Klint's extensive writings. It contains the rarely seen Blue Notebooks, hand-painted and annotated catalogues af Klint created of her most famous series Paintings for the Temple, and a dictionary compiled by af Klint of the words and letters found in her work. This extraordinary collection is edited by and copublished with Christine Burgin, and features an introduction by Iris M ller-Westermann. It will stand as an important and timely contribution to the legacy of Hilma af Klint.

The long-awaited English translation of a pioneering account of af Klint's oeuvre

For the first time since its original publication in 1989, Åke Fant's pioneering account of Hilma af Klint's life and career is available to read in English. Following her training at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and 20 subsequent years of painting, Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) began working with an abstract visual language in 1906. She then dedicated the rest of her life to her magnum opus, a series of large-scale abstract paintings intended to be exhibited as part of an immense spiritual temple. Af Klint drew upon contemporaneous occult sources to develop her work, such as Spiritualism and the writings of Theosophical writers Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant, as well as Rudolf Steiner, who claimed to be clairvoyant. This edition supplements Åke Fant's original text and curator Lars Nittve's foreword with a new preface by Kurt Almqvist (President, Axel and Margaret Ax: son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit). An updated timeline, full-color reproductions of af Klint's art and a beautiful cloth binding further emphasize the momentousness of Fant's work, which remains vital even in the light of subsequent research, at a time when interest in Hilma af Klint and her work has never been greater.

Revelatory and sublime. . . . Her work remains conceptually open enough for viewers to draw their own conclusions, insert their own meaning and feel transported to other glorious worlds. --The New York Times
One of the most inventive artists of the twentieth century, af Klint was a pioneer of abstraction. Her first forays into nonobjective painting preceded the work of Kandinsky and Mondrian and radically mined the fields of science and religion. Deeply interested in spiritualism and philosophy, af Klint developed an iconography that explores esoteric concepts in metaphysics, as demonstrated in Tree of Knowledge. This rarely seen series of works on paper renders orbital, enigmatic forms, visual allegories of unification and separateness, darkness and light, beginning and end, life and death, and spirit and matter.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Hilma af Klint: Tree of Knowledge at David Zwirner, New York, in 2021 and David Zwirner, London, in 2022, this book features a text by the art historian Susan Aberth examining af Klint's spiritual and theosophical influences. With a conversation between curator Helen Molesworth and the US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo discussing connections between Tree of Knowledge and Native theories, the publication broadens the scope of philosophical interpretations of af Klint's timeless work. Also included is a newly commissioned essay by the celebrated af Klint scholar Julia Voss, a contribution by the artist Suzan Frecon, and a text by art historian Max Rosenberg that further develops the conversation around why af Klint's work was not recognized in its time.

With new scholarship, this volume casts af Klint as a pioneering cosmonaut of inner space

For decades a relatively unknown artist, Hilma af Klint has posthumously claimed her rightful place in art history recently but dramatically: her 2019 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum was seen by more than half a million visitors. In 2013, curator Iris Muller-Westermann organized the first retrospective exhibition of af Klint's work. Now she presents us with an extensive survey show, curated with Milena H gsberg, at the Moderna Museet in Malm , which this volume accompanies, supplementing reproductions with the latest information and research on af Klint.

Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium investigates, from a variety of perspectives, the question of how this trailblazing abstract artist linked her painting to a higher consciousness. Essays by art historians, a quantum physicist, a spiritual teacher and an historian of theosophy and esotericism, among others, provide insights into a world beyond the visible which fascinates us now even more than ever.

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a Swedish painter whose simultaneous fascination with art and spiritism led her to produce one of the most astonishing oeuvres in modern art history. Her conventional landscape paintings and botanical illustrations served as her main source of income, but her true lifelong passion lay in the art she created as a result of otherworldly communication. Af Klint's private works not only demonstrate perhaps the first example of true abstraction in Western painting; they also convey a complex, deeply felt system of spirituality that guided af Klint throughout her life and career.

Af Klint's exquisitely rendered botanical portfolio reveals a deep spiritual engagement with the flora of her native Sweden

Across the spring and summer seasons of 1919 and 1920, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint engaged in a period of intense observation of nature, venturing into forests and fields and drawing the flowers she found there. The resulting 46 sheets comprise her Nature Studies portfolio, recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In pencil and jewel-toned watercolor, af Klint juxtaposed exquisitely rendered blossoms with enigmatic diagrams: a blooming sunflower is echoed by nested circles; lily of the valley is joined by a colorful checkerboard; catsfoot is set against a pair of mirrored spirals. Together, these two modes--representational and abstract--demonstrate the artist's belief that close observation of nature reveals what stands behind the flowers ineffable aspects of the human character.
Published in conjunction with the first public exhibition of this rare portfolio, Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers presents the drawings alongside contextualizing artworks and translations of the artist's previously unpublished writings. An overview essay by curator Jodi Hauptman explores af Klint's portfolio and the circumstances of its creation; texts by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Laura Neufeld and Lena Struwe unpack the imagery, materiality and botanical knowledge behind these works.
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) trained at Stockholm's Royal Academy of Fine Arts and established herself as a professional artist. In the first decade of the 20th century, she developed a unique abstract vocabulary, some years earlier than her peers. Whether on canvas or on paper, her singular work is informed by her spiritual investigations and, as this project demonstrates, an interest in and attunement to the natural world.

Scholars from diverse disciplines tackle the many questions posed by the work and life of abstraction pioneer Hilma af Klint

In this thorough critical appraisal, 20 specialists on modern art, art history, philosophy and religious studies examine the unique art, the cultural circumstances and art-historical positioning of Swedish abstractionist Hilma af Klint. Topics explored here range from early abstract art and the impact of Darwinism to Goethe's color theory, as well as the importance of occult religious movements such as theosophy and anthroposophy that influenced the early modernists, and discussions of af Klint's own personal diary notes and research.

The book is based on the seminars that were held in conjunction with the exhibition Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction in 2013. This extremely successful exhibition attracted a record number of visitors to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, after which it continued to the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

A handsomely redesigned edition of essays examining af Klint's final abstractions

The result of a series of lectures delivered during the 2016 Serpentine Galleries exhibition Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen, this volume gathers essays examining the last abstract series made by Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). The paintings were all created in the first half of the year 1920 and are the last paintings af Klint made before turning to watercolor.

Reproductions of these images are complemented by essays from Briony Fer, David Lomas, Branden W. Joseph, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum, which shed new light on af Klint and her importance for artists today, also addressing the need for a broader conception of art history that her work proposes.

Beautifully redesigned by Sweden's most famous designer, this book is a key contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on this immensely popular painter.

A three-volume slipcased facsimile of sketchbooks from Hilma af Klint and her Spiritualist circle

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a pioneer of modern abstract art who turned away from the visible, physical world to embrace a spiritual reality in both her life and work. In 1896, together with Anna Cassel (1860-1937), Cornelia Cederberg (1854-1933), Sigrid Hedman (1855-1922) and Mathilda Nilsson (1844-1923), af Klint left the Edelweiss Society--a group which combined Christian concepts with ideas of Theosophy and Spiritualism--and established The Five. The all-female group, which met every Friday in Stockholm to practice group meditations and séances, believed they could channel mystic beings whom they called the High Masters, with names such as Amaliel, Ananda and Gregor. In trancelike states, the women transcribed the messages from these High Masters via automatic writings and drawings into a series of shared sketchbooks, resulting in a kaleidoscope of collective and raw work that is firmly rooted in the spiritual realm.
Over the course of the group's existence, up until 1908, they filled 15 such sketchbooks, three of which have been reproduced in facsimile form for the first time and are presented in this sumptuous slipcased edition. The set includes sketchbook nos. 2, 6 and 13, dating from October 1896 to January 1906, and provides a rare look into the early influential years of af Klint's artistic and spiritual practice.

A lavishly produced facsimile of af Klint's rarely seen portfolio of botanical drawings

Hilma af Klint's Nature Studies portfolio (1919-20), rooted in the artist's close observation of flowering plants and her extensive botanical knowledge, aims to connect the material and spiritual realms. The 46 sheets of this pivotal work present more than 100 flowering plants rendered in exquisite detail, evocatively reflecting what the artist saw in the field and what she knew of their morphology, from the shape of a blossom to the arc of a leaf. Juxtaposed with each is a multicolored diagram, drawn from her own abstract language, which visualizes aspects of the human character. Af Klint imagined her portfolio as an atlas--or in botanical terms, a flora--that details the plants of Sweden, where she lived and worked. Hers, however, is a flora of the spirit, a mapping of the natural world in spiritual terms.
This deluxe facsimile of af Klint's rarely seen portfolio is published in a limited edition of 500. Each of the 46 drawings is presented on its own sheet at full scale, and the collection is enclosed in a luxe clamshell case. A booklet with a contextualizing essay by curator Jodi Hauptman examines af Klint's engagement with the natural world.