Foreword by Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist. Text by Daniel Birnbaum, Jennifer Higgie, Julia Voss.
Working before Kandinsky and Malevich, Hilma af Klint was arguably the first abstract painter
Hilma af Klint graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1887, established a studio in the city, and began creating and exhibiting traditional landscapes, botanical drawings and portraits. Privately, however, af Klint was already beginning to discard what she had learned at the Academy in favor of painting the invisible worlds hidden within nature, the spiritual realm and the occult.
As early as 1906, af Klint was working with abstract imagery--giving her a lead of several years in the modernist race to be the first to discover abstraction. She joined a group of four other female artists, “The Five,” which held séances and experimented with automatic writing and drawing--decades before the Surrealists would do something similar.
In 1905, af Klint received a “commission” from the mysterious entity Amaliel to create her most important body of work: The Paintings for the Temple. Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen focuses on this important series, consisting of 193 predominately abstract paintings in various series and subgroups. Claiming to act as merely a medium for spiritual forces guiding her hand, af Klint painted a path towards a harmony between the spiritual and material worlds; good and evil; man and woman; religion and science.
Swedish painter 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.
Featured image is reproduced from Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Bookforum
Albert Mobilio
Her abstraction is infused with an airy (and very contemporary) playfulness.
Before Kandinsky, before Mondrian and before Malevich, there was Hilma af Klint. By day, she painted tame academic portraits and Swedish landscapes in her Stockholm studio. By night, she studied the occult, conducted séances and painted the ravishing, almost psychedelic abstract paintings that, by design, would not be celebrated until decades after her death. Pictured here is her monumental 1915 painting, "Altarpiece, No. 1, Group X" which stands almost eight feet tall, and is reproduced from Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen, published to accompany the Serpentine Galleries' acclaimed recent exhibition. continue to blog
Clandestine early twentieth-century Swedish mystical painter Hilma af Klint's "No. 7, Adulthood, Group IV" (1907), from the Ten Largest series, was never exhibited in the artist's lifetime. Produced in secret under instructions “dictated” by a spirit named Amaliel whom af Klint contacted during séances with a group of five likeminded women artists, it was among the many dozens of paintings that the artist stipulated should not be shown until twenty years after her death—which transpired in 1944. Today, many consider af Klint the first true abstract painter—ahead of Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian. But for the half-century before her work was brought to light (RH Quaytman showed her work at PS1 in 1989), af Klint was a voluntary outsider who knew the world was "not ready" for her radical ideas. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 8 x 10 in. / 192 pgs / 155 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $53.95 ISBN: 9783863358945 PUBLISHER: Koenig Books AVAILABLE: 6/28/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AU/NZ AFR
Published by Koenig Books. Foreword by Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist. Text by Daniel Birnbaum, Jennifer Higgie, Julia Voss.
Working before Kandinsky and Malevich, Hilma af Klint was arguably the first abstract painter
Hilma af Klint graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1887, established a studio in the city, and began creating and exhibiting traditional landscapes, botanical drawings and portraits. Privately, however, af Klint was already beginning to discard what she had learned at the Academy in favor of painting the invisible worlds hidden within nature, the spiritual realm and the occult.
As early as 1906, af Klint was working with abstract imagery--giving her a lead of several years in the modernist race to be the first to discover abstraction. She joined a group of four other female artists, “The Five,” which held séances and experimented with automatic writing and drawing--decades before the Surrealists would do something similar.
In 1905, af Klint received a “commission” from the mysterious entity Amaliel to create her most important body of work: The Paintings for the Temple. Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen focuses on this important series, consisting of 193 predominately abstract paintings in various series and subgroups. Claiming to act as merely a medium for spiritual forces guiding her hand, af Klint painted a path towards a harmony between the spiritual and material worlds; good and evil; man and woman; religion and science.
Swedish painter 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.
