Hilma af Klint rocks the history boat!

I just got back from NYC where a couple of my sisters and I experienced the fall fantastic Solomon Guggenheim exhibition of little known abstract artist Hilma af Klint and her Paintings for the Future. Don't misunderstand. She was well respected in her time (the early 1900's) but died into obscurity and left all her art, more than 1000 paintings, 125 notebooks and instructions to hide her art, to her nephew. That was in 1944.

 In 1906, Af Klint,  an award winning graduate of the Royal Academy in Stockholm, was earning a living as a scientific illustrator. She taught and took commissions for portraits. The loss of her sister and the social hobbies of the times drew her to spiritual investigations and seances. In these seances 5 voices repeatedly visited her and instructed her in painting.

 

Af Klint and four of her friends formed a group to meet regularly and communicate with the spirits and channel messages for an artistic temple of abstract art bearing messages from the spiritual world.

 My sister Annie was struck by the predominant markings of mathematics in the paintings. She also shared knowledge of the Rosicrucions, who believed messages were passed down from ancient sources, and Illuminati symbolism.

My sister Lise was also struck, like me, by the colors, the line work, and the similarities to Haitian Voodou art. There is something very universal in the paintings that seem to identify with our basic meditative musings.

Af Klint's work in series made me itch to run home and paint. I could feel the playfulness of each variation on the theme and yet stood in awe of the serious searching contained in each of the works.

Hilma af Klint was convinced that a woman's voice in the art world would be destroyed ignored and she was not sure that her society was ready for abstract art, so she instructed her works of art to be hidden from view for 20 years after her death. It actually was hidden for 40 years. But in her lifetime af Klint exhibited her paintings and she carried a small notebook with a photograph of each of the large works she painted, with watercolor notes to share with interested people. She documented everything in Swedish and now I cannot wait for a good translation of her notebooks for us to buy.

I got the postcard collection of her giant tempera Paintings for the Future series.

                                   And merchandise included this lovely silky sheer tunic!
Everyone who can, must see the show. It rewrites art history. Hilma af Klint's abstract paintings were painted years before Kandinsky or Malevich or Mondrian removed the representational in their works. Yet THEY are called the founder's of Abstraction.- up through April 23, 2019