Text by Ernst Peter Fischer, Ylva Hillström, Milena Hoegsberg, Anne Sophie Joergensen, Caroline Levander, Hedvig Martin, Iris Müller-Westermann, Tim Rudboeg.
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 Høgsberg, at the Moderna Museet in Malmö, 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.
“No. 9, Old Age” (1907) is reproduced from 'Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
ARLIS/NA Reviews
Sarah Falls
Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium is the latest scholarly work in a growing canon about the artist. Relatively unknown before the 1980s, af Klint has gained recent worldwide popularity through two retrospective exhibits with record-breaking attendance. Moderna Museet has partnered with the Hilma af Klint Foundation to preserve, document, and research her oeuvre, and this publication allows the curators to push further, situating her roles as woman artist, medium, and researcher.
Given the general state of things, we wanted to get this week off to a good start. Thus, "Group 8, No. 2" (1913), from Hatje Cantz's popular yet scholarly overview, Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium. “In order to liberate oneself from prevailing truths and opinions, one has to dare to leave safe ground,” Moderna Museet curator Iris Müller-Westermann writes. “Time and again throughout her life af Klint was prepared to take that risk. Although she kept copious notes in which she tried to put what she experienced into context, it is the images that constitute the essential message that she has left behind. They are powerful, remarkable, radical images. At first glance, many of them seem very simple, but in interaction with each other they reveal their complexity. It would be pointless to directly translate the symbols and letters that appear in af Klint’s work into verbal meaning. They always have to be seen in relation to the whole. Symbols are like doors to other dimensions. Hilma af Klint’s fascinating images that generate such a great deal of interest today, one hundred years after their creation, invite us to go on a journey into another dimension—an inward journey, which is simultaneously also a journey outwards, beyond.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 11 x 8.5 in. / 280 pgs / 200 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $77 ISBN: 9783775747400 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 6/16/2020 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Ernst Peter Fischer, Ylva Hillström, Milena Hoegsberg, Anne Sophie Joergensen, Caroline Levander, Hedvig Martin, Iris Müller-Westermann, Tim Rudboeg.
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 Høgsberg, at the Moderna Museet in Malmö, 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.
