Synopsis:
A groundbreaking study of visionary artist Hilma af Klint.
When Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died in 1944 at the age of 81, she left behind more than a thousand paintings and works on paper that she kept largely private during her lifetime. Believing the world was not yet ready for her art, she stipulated that it should remain unseen for another 20 years. But only in recent decades has the public had a chance to reckon with af Klint’s radically abstract painting practice – one which predates the work of Vasily Kandinsky and other artists widely considered trailblazers of modernist abstraction.
Accompanying the first major survey exhibition of the artist’s work in the United States, Hilma af Klint represents her groundbreaking painting series while expanding recent scholarship to present the fullest picture yet of the artist’s life and work. Essays explore the social, intellectual, and artistic milieu of af Klint’s 1906 break with figuration and her subsequent development, placing her in the context of Swedish modernism and folk art traditions, contemporary scientific discoveries, and spiritualist and occult movements. A roundtable discussion among contemporary artists, scholars, and curators considers af Klint’s sources and relevance to art in the 21st century. The volume also delves into her unrealized plans for a spiral-shaped temple in which to display her art – a wish that finds a fortuitous answer in the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda, the site of the forthcoming exhibition.
Review:
Af Klint did not ask for her work to be destroyed, only delayed. She did not wait for the world to discover her paintings. The world had to wait for them.--Prudence Peiffer "Garage "
Klint created her own optical language with visual, chromatic, structural, and narrative syntax. Her artistic ship sails some of the deepest waters around.--Jerry Saltz "Vulture "
The canvases are massive and their idiosyncratic shapes, squiggles, and colors provide the viewer with an overwhelming sense of wonder.--Zachary Small "Hyperallergic "
Without precedent in the history of art.--Cristiana Campanini "Abitare "
Af Klint's ascendancy feels inevitable: She could be viewed as a heroine for our current moment, an artist who rejected commercial success, resisted the pull of self-publicity, and challanged the myth of individual authorship.--Julia Bryan-Wilson "Bookforum "
[The exhibition] remains as radical as ever and offers a welcome retort to modernism's male-centric narrative.--Elle
A week after I saw [af Klint's paintings], their pulsing loveliness remains undimmed in my mind, like a self-replenishing sense memory of summer.--Sebastian Smee "Washington Post "
The Guggenheim Museum offers a revisionary chapter about the start of modern abstraction in its current headliner, "Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future," introducing works that this Swedish artist and mystic made in 1906-7.--Roberta Smith "New York Times "
[A] superb catalog.--Roberta Smith "The New York Times "
Af Klint set about composing for posterity an alluring eye-music that echoed back the complex psyche of her age.--Kelly Grovier "BBC "
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