02.10.2015 — 03.01.2016

Hilma af Klint

A pioneer of Abstraction

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Installation shot: Øystein Thorvaldsen / Henie Onstad Archive

The first big retrospective exhibition of the Swedish mystic artist Hilma af Klint’s work.

Date Place

02.10.2015 — 03.01.2016 Main Gallery

The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century was times of dramatic scientific discoveries into the invisible worlds of radiation, atoms and space. The same time saw also a flowering of all sorts of esoteric and occult exploration, including theosophy, anthroposophy, spiritism and ritual magic.

Hilma Af Klint (1862-1944) holds a special position in the history of Scandinavian visual culture, as a woman who, at the turn of the 20th century went completely her own way. Being an established figurative artist, she secretly and systematically followed her strong inner impulses to chart way into radical artistic abstraction, years before Kandinsky and Malevich. Her best work is instantly recognizable as modern in the same time that it carries the spiritual sensitivity and vision that we can find in the great classics of mystical literature and art.

Hilma af Klint ─ A pioneer of Abstraction
Hilma af Klint
Milena Høgsberg
- 1862 Born in Stockholm.
- 1879 Participates for the first time in spiritualist séances, takes an interest in Theosophy.
- 1882-1887 Studies at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm. Afterwards she is assigned a studio in the middle of Stockholm and paints portraits and landscapes in a naturalistic style.
- 1896-1906 Regularly meets four other women to hold spiritualist gatherings and séances. The group calls itself The Five. In notebooks they describe contacts with “higher consciousness” and their work with automatic writing and drawing.
- 1906 Paints her first abstract pictures. They form the beginning of a long series totaling 193 works, which she calls The Paintings for the Temple. The work is kept secret and is only shown to a few initiates.
- 1908 In Stockholm she meets Rudolf Steiner, who at this time is General Secretary of the German section of the Theosophical Society. Steiner is critical of her mediumistic working method.
- 1914 Exhibits naturalistic paintings at the Baltic Exhibition in Malmö. The Russian section of the exhibition shows works by Wassily Kandinsky, who three years previously, probably influenced by Theosophy, has published his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art.
- 1915 Finishes the work on The Paintings for the Temple.
- 1916-1920 Works in smaller formats and in a more geometrically simplified idiom.
- 1920 Becomes a member of the Anthroposophical Society and travels to Dornach in Switzerland, where she meets Rudolf Steiner again. She is now more directly influenced by his aesthetics and over the next few years stays at Dornach for extended periods.
- 1944 Dies nearly 82 years old. Leaves over 1,000 paintings and 125 notebooks. Her will states that her abstract, occult paintings must not be shown in public until twenty years after her death.