Hilma af Klint

Why this artist matters now

Hilma af Klint was a Swedish painter who created abstract compositions decades before the European avant-garde claimed abstraction as its invention. Working from 1906 onwards, she developed a visual language of spirals, geometric forms, and ethereal color fields in response to spiritual inquiry and séance experiences. Her large-scale paintings on canvas and paper remained largely unknown until decades after her death, when institutions including the Guggenheim began to reassess her foundational role in modernism's origins. The formal sophistication of her work, combined with the singular circumstances of its creation, has fundamentally altered art historical narratives of abstraction's emergence.

Source: Wikidata · Trust score: 85% · Updated 17d ago