Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future

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Reading it was a revelation, and it has changed my understanding of the artist, the woman, and her times. Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) began painting her abstract and highly symbolic images as early as 1906, long before Kandinsky and Malevich arrived at what has generally been regarded as the birth of modern abstract art. The exhibition of her work in 2018 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City attracted more than 600,000 visitors, making it the most-attended show in the history of the museum/institution.

For example, Theosophy, among the most popular, sought to reconcile the spirit with the natural and scientific worlds, and many artists embraced it: Kandinsky, Mondrian, Kupka, and Arthur Dove all studied Theosophy; none of them, however, ever publicly suggested their canvases were the expressions of any consciousness other than their own. This is a community of art enthusiasts interested in a vast range of movements, styles, media, and methodologies. Curated by Tracey Bashkoff, the first major American museum exhibition of the visionary Swedish painter Hilma af Klint opens tomorrow at the Guggenheim, and all the art world's abuzz. Featuring works never before seen in the UK, this paperback exhibition book will elucidate and invigorate our understanding of two ground-breaking artists and will be sure to get synapses firing. The invention of the telegraph and telephone made it possible to communicate over long distances, and spiritualists believed it was possible to speak with the dead.Her work from the early 20th century predates the first purely abstract paintings by Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich. Her work has also appeared in Artforum , Journal of Surrealism of the Americas, Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies , and Black Mirror .

The canvases are massive and their idiosyncratic shapes, squiggles, and colors provide the viewer with an overwhelming sense of wonder. In the face of a society – and an art world – riddled with extreme misogyny, a quiet, conventional career in portraiture seemed the best she could hope for. Guggenheim Museum's 2018 survey of af Klint's work was the first major solo exhibition in the United States devoted to the artist, offering an unprecedented opportunity to experience af Klint's long-underrecognized artistic achievements.

All collections are from our warehouse in Melksham, Wiltshire (address found at the bottom of the page). What’s interesting, the author suggests, isn’t that Af Klint, in a century awash with spiritual fads, heard voices. Believing the world was not yet ready for her art, she stipulated that it remain unseen for another 20 years. It is widely accepted now that well before painters like Wassily Kandinsky or Kazimir Malevich claimed to have invented abstraction, she had been painting in that mode for several years—first in small formats and then on an enormous scale. She completed her graduate studies at Northwestern University where she received a Mellon Fellowship in Art Objects.

Fer has also curated numerous exhibitions, such as the recent show of Gabriel Orozco at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in 2013. 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. 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.It is as though, in our apocalyptic time, we need af Klint’s work now more than ever, and the purity of vision and intent it represents.