In October of 2018, I saw an exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in New York featuring the work of Hilma af Klint. I had never heard of her before this exhibit and I found her story very interesting.
Born in Sweden in 1862, af Klint studied art at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. She Graduated with honors and at the time was mostly painting naturalist paintings.
The death of a younger sister helped to push af Klint toward a type of spiritualism called Theosophy. In 1906 at the age of 44 she painted her first series of abstract paintings. She was painting abstract works long before Kandinsky or Mondrian came on the scene. In the end she felt that her spiritualist work was so ground breaking that it wasn't ready for the world to see it. She left instructions for her work not to be displayed for 20 years after her death. In the end, it would be almost 40 years before her work received the recognition it deserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment