Hilma AF Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

With new scholarship, this volume casts af Klint as a pioneering cosmonaut of inner space

For decades a relatively unknown artist, Hilma af Klint has posthumously claimed her rightful place in art history recently but dramatically: her 2019 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum was seen by more than half a million visitors. In 2013, curator Iris Muller-Westermann organized the first retrospective exhibition of af Klint's work. Now she presents us with an extensive survey show, curated with Milena Høgsberg, at the Moderna Museet in Malmö, which this volume accompanies, supplementing reproductions with the latest information and research on af Klint.

Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium investigates, from a variety of perspectives, the question of how this trailblazing abstract artist linked her painting to a higher consciousness. Essays by art historians, a quantum physicist, a spiritual teacher and an historian of theosophy and esotericism, among others, provide insights into a world beyond the visible which fascinates us now even more than ever.

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a Swedish painter whose simultaneous fascination with art and spiritism led her to produce one of the most astonishing oeuvres in modern art history. Her conventional landscape paintings and botanical illustrations served as her main source of income, but her true lifelong passion lay in the art she created as a result of otherworldly communication. Af Klint's private works not only demonstrate perhaps the first example of true abstraction in Western painting; they also convey a complex, deeply felt system of spirituality that guided af Klint throughout her life and career.

Review Quotes

Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium is the latest scholarly work in a growing canon about the artist. Relatively unknown before the 1980s, af Klint has gained recent worldwide popularity through two retrospective exhibits with record-breaking attendance. Moderna Museet has partnered with the Hilma af Klint Foundation to preserve, document, and research her oeuvre, and this publication allows the curators to push further, situating her roles as woman artist, medium, and researcher.--Sarah Falls "ARLIS/NA Reviews"