Collection: Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint (1862 –1944) was a Swedish painter and mystic, born in Solna and dying in Djursholm. She trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Her paintings are considered among the earliest abstract works in Western art history, predating compositions by Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian. Her artistic practice was deeply influenced by spiritualism and theosophical teachings.

Af Klint's work often took on a diagrammatic quality, serving as a visual representation of complex spiritual concepts. She was a member of "The Five," a collective of women inspired by Theosophy, who engaged in séances to contact "High Masters." These sessions and her spiritual beliefs directly informed her bold, non-representational compositions.

Af Klint's extensive body of work, rooted in theosophical occultism, remained largely unseen during her lifetime. She stipulated that her art should not be publicly exhibited until two decades after her death. Consequently, her pioneering abstract paintings gained international recognition only from the 1980s onward, notably through a significant exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 2018.