Hilma af Klint (1862 – 1944) was a Swedish artist and mystic (the practice of religious ecstasies) whose paintings were among the first Western abstract art.
A considerable body of her abstract work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Wassily Kandinsky, who is a Russian painter and art theorist that is generally credited as the pioneer of abstract art
She belonged to a group called “The Five”, a circle of women who shared her belief in the importance of trying to make contact with the so-called “High Masters”—often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas. Hilma af Klint was spurred on by the deities who spoke to her.
From her family, Hilma af Klint inherited a great interest for mathematics and botany. Before she began making non-objective art, af Klint worked briefly as a draughtsperson for a veterinary institute, producing detailed drawings of animal surgeries. That interest in the natural world stuck with her throughout her career—she studied Carl Linnaeus’s botanical drawings and even herself drew flowers, carefully mapping out their parts.
She showed an early ability in visual art, and after the family moved to Stockholm, she studied in Stockholm, where she learned portraiture and landscape painting. She was admitted at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at the age of twenty. During the years 1882–1887 she studied mainly drawing, and portrait and landscape painting. She graduated with honors, and was allocated a scholarship in the form of a studio in the so-called “Atelier Building”.
All through her life, Hilma af Klint would seek to understand the mysteries that she had come in contact with through her work. She produced more than 150 notebooks with her thoughts and studies.
Hilma af Klint drew the conclusion that her time was not yet ready to understand them. More than 1200 paintings and drawings were carefully stored away in her atelier, waiting for the future. Ultimately, her work was all but unseen until 1986, and only over the subsequent three decades have her paintings and works on paper begun to receive serious attention.
Hilma af Klint died in Djursholm, Sweden in 1944, nearly 82 years old, in the aftermath of a traffic accident, having only exhibited her works a handful of times.
View 25 of her paintings. See a short video on YouTube put on by the Guggenhein Museum.
Sources: Wikipedia, Artnews, Wikiart, Guggenheim Museum
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