Hilma af Klint was born in Stockholm Sweden in 1862 and graduated from the City’ Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1887. She then established herself as a well-known painter in Stockholm. She also served as secretary of the association of the Swedish Women Artists. Shortly after, she began gaining interest and becoming deeply involved in spiritualism and theosophy. Spirituality and being spiritual was wildly popular across the art world or anyone that was involved in art, especially in Europe and the United States. Hilma Klint began creating abstract paintings in 1906. The paintings were bold, colorful, and untethered from any recognizable references to the physical world. The paintings were meant to speak to you in a spiritual way and not in any physical way. For almost 60 years Hilma Klint produced hundreds of painting along with scriptures and calligraphy.  Her conceptual work originates before the works of other abstractionists who were viewed as the pioneers of the 1900s. Her groundbreaking paintings were largely private. She rarely showed them to anyone. She knew that the world was not yet ready to understand the power and the spirituality that her paintings held. Her work was discovered in 1986, 20 years after her death. Only over the subsequent three decades have her paintings and works on paper begun to receive serious attention.
Her exhibit, “ Paintings for the Future/ Spirituality and Identity” had a powerful impact on the viewers’ perception of art. Her paintings covered the concept of nature, symbolism, and spirituality.  The paintings were generated through her practices and spirituality. The paintings were reflective of articulate mystical views of reality. Stylistically, they are strikingly diverse, incorporating both biomorphic and geometric forms, expansive and intimate scales, and maximalist and reductive approaches to composition and color. What makes her work astonishing is that the painting takes on forms of living beings. She would assign each color to have a specific gender role.
She spreads the spiritual energy of Gaia, whos a mother who presided over the earth in Greek Mythology. She was always trying to connect with the viewer and tried to lift them spiritually.  Hilma af Klint’s work really spoke to me, even though at first glance at her paintings I was confused not knowing what I was looking, but as I read about the paintings it opened my mind and it gave me a clear understanding of each piece. I grew up in a very spiritual and religious family and for that, I try to have a spiritual meaning in all my art.

Work Cited

Schjeldahl, P., & Schjeldahl, P. (2018, October 11). Hilma af Klint's Visionary Paintings. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/hilma-af-klints-visionary-paintings

“Hilma Af Klint: Paintings for the Future.” Guggenheim, 26 Oct. 2018, www.guggenheim.org/publication/hilma-af-klint-paintings-for-the-future.