Up: [[Artists and Art Movements]] Created: 2023-11-26 Updated: 2024-07-26 ![[Hilma af Klint portrait.webp|300]] Hilma af Klint was a Swedish painter born October 26, 1862 to an aristocratic family. She grew up in a castle. Her father was a naval academy instructor who supported his daughter’s interests in the accepted painting practice of botanicals, landscapes and portraits. She never married and studying at an art academy was a typical thing for unmarried women to do so that they would be able to earn the money to support themselves. When Hilma died on October 21, 1944 she left behind 26,000 pages of journals about her work, not personal writing. And 1500 paintings. In one year alone, she is known to have made 111 paintings. Her nephew was directed that her work not be revealed for 20 years. It actually wasn’t known of by an international audience until 1984 when an art historian gave a presentation about af Klint at a conference. She really exploded onto the art scene in 2018 when the Guggenheim in New York mounted a major exhibition of her work. Hilma was a member of a group of women called ‘The Five’, a theosophy society as was typical of many artists of the time. The women believed in the importance of trying to contact the ‘High Masters’, often through seance. They conducted seances every week, experimenting with freewriting and different ways to create more intuitively. These experiments predated the surrealists by decades. Hilma’s interest in spiritualism and the occult had grown following the death of her ten year old sister, Hermina when Hilma was eighteen. Hilma was an abstract artist a couple of decades before Kandinsky who has been accepted as the first. But people didn’t know of her work, partly because it had turned towards a more mystical theme and, when she shared it with famed occultist Rudolf Steiner, looking for mentorship, he told her she should stop painting, that it wouldn’t be accepted for at least 50 years. He took photographs of her work and there’s some suggestion that he might have shared those photos with Kandinsky, whom he knew. Af Klint stopped painting for four years after her meeting with Steiner. She later made it a condition of her will that the 193 paintings made between 1905 and 1916 could never be sold because they had been painted by a higher power. This belief came during a seance in 1904 when she heard a voice tell her to make paintings “on an astral plane” in order to “proclaim a new philosophy of life.” As she said, *the pictures were painted directly through me, with great power*. She was very intentional and spiritually focused in her colour choices. These three are from her Primordial Chaos series in 1906. ![[Af Klint Primordial Chaos 1.webp|300]] ![[af Klint Primordial Chaos 2.webp|300]] ![[af Klint Primordial Chaos 3.webp|300]] This one is from the Ten Largest series. It’s titled No.2 Childhood. ![[af Klint No 2 Childhood.webp|400]] And this one is the now famous Swan No.1, from 1914-1915. She did many Swans in a series. ![[Af Klint the Swan No. 1.webp|400]] Hilma lived with her mother until her mother’s death in 1920. She ended up being quite poor, and was supported by a wealthy female friend who built a studio for her on her large property. Hilma worked very large on sheets of paper on the floor. There were a few comments made in the documentary that really grabbed my attention: - She was trying to dissolve the boundaries of reality. - She began by looking and listening. Paying attention! - Hilma said her work required *stillness in both thought and feeling*. I think this describes the stillpoint [[Quotes - Stillpoint]] - She walked the way at the same time she made the way; an incredibly difficult thing to do. - She worked with duality, as seen in the Swan images. She said *many a female costume conceals a man and many a male costume conceals a woman.* There was a science historian in the documentary who was quite animated and said a couple of pithy things: - “I think the world has forgotten how to marvel.” - “We don’t see the world as it is. If the spectrum is the width of our arms, we see one finger. Therefore we can’t portray the world as it is. We have to invent it.” And finally, a wonderful ad from Guerilla Girls when advertising the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA) — Do women have to be naked to get into the MET? Followed by a statement that only 5% of artists represented in MOMA are women, but 85% of the nude models are women. This ad is particularly telling because MOMA has refused to acknowledge af Klint’s work saying that she didn’t exhibit it when she was alive so it’s not important. And an art critic explained in the movie that if an artist’s work can’t be sold in series, it’s not of interest to galleries. They’re looking for the profit. > [!Orbit] [[Hilma af Klint]] > You must learn how to ignore your fear, for without the will to believe in yourself, nothing good will happen. > [!user] Sources > Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint > A documentary rented from iMovies on Nov. 25, 2023