Basic Art Series - Hilma af Klint
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Description
Delve into the mystical world of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, whose work from the early 20th century has only recently gained critical attention. An early pioneer of abstraction, af Klint created immersive, colorful paintings filled with geometric variations and biomorphic shapes.
A guided tour of af Klint’s hidden universe: where art, science, and mysticism converge
Hilma af Klint painted as though she was channeling the universe. Fascinated from childhood by botany and mathematics, she began her career painting landscapes and portraits, but other preoccupations stirred within her: questions of spirit, unseen energies, patterns too vast for the eye alone.
Her art was inseparable from her spiritual practice. With a circle of female artists called The Five, she held séances, heard voices from "High Masters," and was inspired by the Theosophical Society and Rudolf Steiner’s theories. Working tirelessly to map life’s hidden dimensions, she would paint to the point of physical collapse.
By 1906, her canvases featured radiant geometries of spirals and orbs, impregnated with symbols, letters, and words, anticipating the later embrace of abstraction by Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, and others. Her vast painted cycles—like her works for the Temple and The Ten Largest—often depicted dualities: inside and out, the earthly and the esoteric, man and woman, good and evil.
Living as a vegetarian, questioning the fixity of gender, af Klint was clearly before her time, yet very much of it too, and pretty much uncelebrated in her day. Her prodigious output lay unseen for decades, locked away by her own instruction. Only in the 1980s did the world begin to recognize her as a true pioneer of abstract art.
This book invites you into her visionary world, via a luminous selection of her works and a detailed essay distilling their complexity. Her once-secret universe is revealed to us anew.
- Publisher: Taschen, 2026.
- Author: Janis Mink.
- ISBN 978-3-8365-9903-0
- Size 21 x 26 cm, 96 pages.
- Hardcover.
- Language English.
Arcana Borealis – Northern Women and Esotericism
The exhibition is the first showcase of the work of Northern women artists who have been influenced by alternative spiritual currents. The exhibition is groundbreaking, as the profound connection between modern art and esotericism, occultism and magic has previously been explored mainly through famous men artists.
The exhibition features both well-known and overlooked artists from the 19th century to the present day, including Anna-Eva Bergman, Anna Cassel, Ilona Harima, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, Maja Fjaestad, Hilma af Klint, Iria Leino, Outi Pieski, Laila Pullinen, Elga Sesemann and Ellen Thesleff.
Hilma af Klint, The Dove no 1, Group 9, Series UW, 1915, By Courtesy of The Hilma af Klint Foundation. Photo: Moderna Museet
Every purchase supports the Finnish National Gallery
