Hilma af Klint, the artist who created abstract art but died without showing it, arrives at the Guggenheim two centuries later

Before dying, the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (Stockholm, 1862-1944), wrote in her last will that her works should not be exhibited for at least 20 years. Although she held exhibitions throughout her life, she only showed her figurative paintings and, very occasionally, her abstract ones, which, despite being a pioneer in that form of expression, she never presented in the context of the conventional art world, but rather It seeks to share them with related spiritual communities, although it is true that it fails to find an enthusiastic audience. In fact, Af Klint created his first abstract paintings in 1906, before Kandinsky, who did not publish his first work until 1911. However, he always thought that his works would not be valued in his time.

“If there is something that characterizes her work, it is that despite being an artist who began working at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, her work has not been recognized until the 21st century. Partly because the artist herself showed it very little, she considered that it had to be a very specific audience that had to access it and, partly, because it has taken us time to be able to show it as she considered it should be,” Lucía acknowledges. Agirre, curator of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao after presenting ‘Hilma af Klint’, the exhibition that returns to the Swedish artist the recognition that she has always deserved.

Despite not showing his works to the art world, Af Klint took care to save and classify them for the future. He dedicated almost a decade to creating his work, in his early years working with traditional themes and automatic drawings and later giving shape to his most notable series, such as ‘Paintings for the Temple’, ‘Perceval’ or his late watercolors. All of them will be available in the exhibition at the Bilbao art gallery, sponsored by Iberdrola and with the collaboration of the Hilma af Klint Foundation. “This exhibition is going to present to us all the elements that are part of Hilma Af Klint’s work, it is going to introduce us to her philosophy, to her ideas about theosophy, anthroposophy, and Rosicrucianism. Also his ideas about art and the evolution that his work experienced over six decades,” explains Agirre.

Born into a noble family due to military merit, Hilma af Klint has the privilege of accessing education and training. Beyond learning through her family, she received traditional artistic training at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, which was one of the first institutions to allow women to draw from a live model. Like many people of her time, Af Klint does not see a confrontation between the spiritual and scientific worlds, quite the opposite, for her both serve to reach a higher truth. This interest of the artist made her participate in spiritualism sessions, common at the time, although reviled by traditional religions. In fact, he does not show his ‘Temple Paintings’ to almost anyone, although among the select group of people who entered his Stockholm studio to see his works is one of his most admired figures, Rudolph Steiner, leader of the German Theosophical Society.

In 1896 Hilma af Klint met with four other women Anna Cassel, Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman and Mathilda Nilsson to found the group ‘The Five’ (De Fem). These women meet regularly to hold spiritualism sessions, contact the afterlife and channel their experiences through writing and automatic drawings. Hilma af Klint believes that ‘The Five’ have received a commission from the spirits to make the ‘Paintings for the Temple’, and in 1906 she began to work on the first series of this cycle, called WU/Pink, where the letter W represents matter and U the spirit, WU being duality. The rose is linked to Rosicrucianism, a secret order linked to the esoteric knowledge of alchemists founded in the 17th century by Christians opposed to the rigid dogma of the Church of their time. The Pink Cross or Rose Cross is its main emblem, and it is on an altar with a rose in the middle of a cross that Af Klint and his circle perform séances.

Thus, in ‘Paintings for the Temple’ the artist carries out a total of 193 works divided into different series, between paintings and drawings, leaving behind what she had formally learned to focus on a new art linked to spiritualism and other systems of thought such as Rosicrucianism, theosophy or anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner. “Conceived to be installed in a helical temple that will never be realized, the ‘Temple Paintings’ explore what remains hidden to the naked eye, something that was of interest to both scientific and spiritual movements at the time, including Hilma af Klint and other modern artists”, they collect from the museum.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao will host the tour of the work of the artist Hilma af Klint until February 2, 2025 and activities will be carried out such as talks, creative sessions, musical visits, and the screening of ‘Beyond the Visible’, the December 5, a documentary directed by Halina Dyrschka in 2019 that discovers Hilma af Klint’s career as a pioneer of abstraction.