HILMA AF KLINT

“The pictures were painted directly through me. Without any preliminary drawings, and with great force”

For years Wassily Kandinsky was known as ‘the man who invented abstract art’, but according to more recent research it seems another, a woman, might actually lay claim to such a title. Her name: Hilma af Klint.

Born in Sweden in 1862 and raised in a protestant family were two fundamental makings of the young artist. For one, being born in Sweden allowed Klint phenomenal exploration of her craft, as one of the first countries - well before France, Germany or Italy - to permit woman to study. Second, was Klint’s exposure to religion and more specifically ‘Theosophy’: the shared ideology that God may be achieved through ‘spiritual ecstasy’, ‘direct intuition’, or ‘special individual relations’, Klint was just seventeen when she participated in her first theosophical seance - an event that would influence her work greatly.

Hilma af Klint was thought to be a troubled woman - though that would depend on your own unique beliefs. Her series of abstracts, ‘Primordial Chaos’. were born out of the drawings she made, apparently unconsciously, during seances in the 1890s - a method later coined by Surrealists as, “automatic drawing”. This frenzied collection was an electric blend of depictions including wild landscapes - specifically one stormy sea, above which mysterious lights flicker ominously. however, other inclusions are far more abstruse, combining geometric shapes, dynamic brush strokes, single letters and irregular symbols. This is where Klint’s production of Abstract art really began:

Kandinsky’s 191 I Untitled watercolour is what many regard as the first recognised Abstract painting. But, on the quiet, Hilma af Klint was creating mesmerising work of the same nature, five years before in 1906.

Our 21st century art scene wouldn’t be the same without the wrap and intrigue of the Abstract movement, but perhaps we ought to broaden our gaze and look to masterpainters such as the inspirational Hilma af Klint.