Hilma Af Klint was born in Stockholm in 1862 and went on to study at
the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, graduating with honors in 1887.
She soon established herself as a respected painter in Stockholm,
exhibiting deftly rendered figurative paintings and serving briefly as
secretary of the Association of Swedish Women Artists. During these
years she also became deeply involved in spiritualism and Theosophy.
These modes of spiritual engagement were widely popular across Europe
and the United States - especially in literary and artistic circles -
as people sought to reconcile long-held religious beliefs with
scientific advances and a new awareness of the global plurality of
religions.
Af Klint’s first major group of largely nonobjective work, The
Paintings for the Temple, grew directly out of those belief systems.
Produced between 1906 and 1915, the paintings were generated in part
through af Klint’s spiritualist practice as a medium and reflect an
effort to articulate mystical views of reality. Stylistically, they
are strikingly diverse, incorporating both biomorphic and geometric
forms, expansive and intimate scales, and maximalist and reductivist
approaches to composition and color. She imagined installing these
works in a spiral temple, though this plan never came to fruition. In
the years after she completed The Paintings for the Temple, af Klint
continued to push the bounds of her new abstract vocabulary, as she
experimented with form, theme, and seriality, creating some of her
most incisive work.
When Hilma af Klint began creating radically abstract paintings in
1906, they were like little that had been seen before: bold, colorful,
and untethered from any recognizable references to the physical world.
It was years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian,
and others would take similar strides to rid their own artwork of
representational content. Yet while many of her better-known
contemporaries published manifestos and exhibited widely, af Klint
kept her groundbreaking paintings largely private. She rarely
exhibited them and, convinced the world was not yet ready to
understand her work, stipulated that it not be shown for twenty years
following her death. Ultimately, her work was all but unseen until
1986, and only over the subsequent three decades have her paintings
and works on paper begun to receive serious attention.
Childhood No. 1 (1907)
Youth No. 3 (1907)
Adulthood No. 7 (1907)
Sources: Hilma Af Klint Foundation and Guggenheim Museum.
1862
Hilma af Klint is born at Karlberg Palace (Karlbergs slott),
Stockholm, on October 26, 1862.
1872
The family moves to Norrtullsgatan and later to Bastugatan (Sveavägen
today) in Stockholm. The family spends summers at the family mansions
Hanmora and Täppan in the estate of Tofta gård on Adelsö in the lake
Mälaren. Hilma af Klint attends the General School for Girls
(Normalskolan för flickor) on Riddargatan in Stockholm.
1879-1882
Participates in spiritistic séances.
1880
Attends The Technical School (Tekniska Skolan, today’s University
College of Arts, Crafts and Design or Konstfack) in Stockholm, and
studies portrait painting for Kerstin Cardon. Her sister Hermina dies
at the age of 10, which spurs Hilma af Klint’s religious involvement.
1882-87
Attends the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Kungl. Konstakademien).
Graduates with honors, and is awarded a studio in the “Atelier
Building” (Ateljéhuset) at the crossing between Hamngatan and
Kungsträdgården in Stockholm. Her fellow Anna Cassel becomes her life
time friend.
1887-1905
Works as a portraitist and landscape painter.
1889
Becomes member of the Teosophical Society, founded the same year in
the house of the Swedish writer Viktor Rydberg in Stockholm.
1896
First annotations by the group “The Five”, that Hilma af Klint has
founded with four other friends. The group holds séances and exercises
automatic drawings. They make contact with spirits, whom they call
“The High Ones”.
1906
Paints 26 paintings, which constitute the first preparatory group of
the “Paintings for the Temple”.
1914
Exhibits naturalistic paintings at the Baltic exhibition in Malmö –
where also W. Kandinsky exhibits artworks.
1912-1915
In 1912 resumes working on the “Paintings for the Temple”.
1927
Donates the fundamental studies of flowers, mosses and lichen to the
scientific library in Dornach. This collection was a major part of the
esoteric systematization system of nature, developed by Hilma af lint.
This collection seems to have disappeared.
1944
Moves to her cousin Hedvig af Klint in Ösby, Djursholm, Stockholm.
Passes away on October 21, 1944 in the aftermath of a traffic
accident, nearly 82 years old.
Coded by Ana Jansen