Precursors: Hilma af Klint

Long before Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, and others took strides to rid their artwork of representational content, Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) began creating radically abstract paintings in 1906 that were unlike any seen before: bold, colorful, and untethered from any recognizable references to the physical world. In the late 1880s, af Klint became deeply involved in spiritualism and Theosophy, and through the practice of séances and mediumistic exercises, birthed mystical automatic writings, drawings and paintings that articulated transcendent views of reality. She worked in ‘series,’ so there is a visible connection between pieces in the same group. af Klint kept her groundbreaking paintings largely private, rarely exhibited and, convinced the world was not yet ready to understand her work, stipulated that it not be shown until 20 years following her death. It would be 40 years, in fact, before her works were seen in 1986, and only over the subsequent decades have her paintings and works on paper begun to receive serious attention.

The Tree of Knowledge 1913-15, series points to the bible and is perhaps a reference to the role that religion played throughout her life. The artist returns to the theme of the beginning of the world but approaches it from a more explicitly Christian perspective. With detailed and ornate rendering, curved lines, color palette, and motifs drawn from nature the canvases recall art nouveau patterns, which were popular at the time. Likewise, af Klint used vectors to map the movement of forces through space in a style reminiscent of scientific diagrams. It was part of her effort to translate the three dimensional world into a two dimensional plain. Fusing the logic of scientific thinking with the aesthetics of the applied arts, af Klint achieved a unique approach to abstraction.

Later in life, long after she ceased making works like these, af Klint edited the meticulous notebooks she had kept throughout various phases of her artistic development.She compiled indexes and created a visual vocabulary that attempted to systematize the letters and symbols that appeared in her work.

Guggenheim Curator, Tracey Bashkoff notes: “af Klint also produced a series of notebooks, really what looks like presentation books. So that she could discuss the works, and potentially show it to others. So it’s a very interesting impulse that she had, which on one hand was protective and evidenced this refusal to share the work with a wider public, but on the other hand also evidenced some desire of wanting to share the work with others.”

— Christina Spearman