The cosmic heirs of Hilma af Klint

In 1906, the Swedish artist and mystic Hilma af Klint was “contacted” about a large and ambitious project. Af Klint was part of a small occult group that held séances and communicated with spirit beings, and The paintings for the temple it was “assigned” by one of the artist’s spirit guides. At the time of its completion in 1915, it totaled 193 works. “The pictures were painted directly through me, without preliminary drawings and with great force,” said af Klint of one series. Colorful, geometric and symbolic, his otherworldly abstract compositions were wildly radical.

After the project was completed, af Klint continued to paint, but his work from 1917 until his death in 1944 was no longer guided by spirits. In 1932, he decreed that many of his paintings and drawings be kept secret for 20 years after his death. Even then, the art world was slow to appreciate his work. In 1970, a major museum of modern art in Sweden rejected af Klint’s estate. Only in the 21st century did his work begin to resonate.

After a high-profile exhibition in Sweden in 2013, the Guggenheim in New York opened a af klint retrospective in 2018, and the furor around the mysterious artist and her radical, spiritual paintings reached a fever pitch. The reason? “She turned everything we thought about the history of abstraction upside down,” says Tate Modern Curator of International Art Nabila Abdel Nabi.

Today, the fascination with Af Klint continues to grow, fueled by a flurry of new books and the current blockbuster. exhibition at the Tate Modern Until 3 September. Meanwhile, the influence of her lyrical abstraction and the history of mysticism and mediumship behind her is palpable among a constellation of artists working today.

At first I would dream like the color orange.

“I am especially drawn to the way she was able to integrate figuration, abstraction, and schematic organization on the same canvas,” says the Los Angeles-based artist. green molly, whose surreal settings are meticulously painted and exude a crystalline glow in pastel hues. “Af Klint cemented my comfort in making symmetrical images,” adds the New York-based man. Loie Hollowell, whose heart-pounding abstracts are in high demand (auction prices exceed $1 million). “I also really like the relationship of his work with the body, the way in which great works embrace and attract you.” Hollowell’s body-based works are also autobiographical. “During my first pregnancy, I started doing paintings with large semicircles; I would compose them in geometric designs, thinking about the breasts, the belly, the head, and the buttocks,” she says. The painted surface is also based on foam, creating a 3D element that he recently pushed further, “bringing the actual physical cast of the pregnant belly to work.”

Hollowell does not refer to herself or her work as “spiritual.” Neither did his fellow New Yorker Angela Heisch, whose dynamic abstract work was recently exhibited at London’s Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (the show sold out before opening, with half of the works going to institutions). The New Zealand-born painter, however, mentions “vibrational force” as a common theme in these later works, which draw the viewer towards central spherical shapes, reminiscent of pearls or planets. He also admits an interest in “that unknown component that unites us all, in trying to convey feelings and emotions.”

in his book The Other Side: A Journey Into Women, Art, and the Spirit World, Jennifer Higgie writes that “the very air pulsed with invisible energies” for af Klint. “The question was how to interpret them? How to shape them? For today’s artists, the nature of these “energies” is interpreted in different ways. “I feel like I’m channeling something,” says the Kazakhstan-born artist. aigana gali, whose recent exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde’s gallery in London featured light-filled canvases of mystical, organic symbols and specters that she says began with dreams: “I would become a color. I have no explanation why. But at first I dreamed of the color orange”.

Chilean artist Juana Unzueta he sees af Klint as one of several artists who “understood geometry and abstraction as a means to connect with something metaphysical,” he says. Unzueta’s watercolor and pastel patterns strive to make the same connection; punctuated with holes, they often appear as free-standing shapes that let in light. Los Angeles-based artist Eamon Ore Giron agrees. His geometric constellations are inspired by “an abstraction born in the Americas,” but he also feels a “nice relationship towards [af Klint’s] approach – not just as formalistic exercises, but as a means of expressing personal philosophical ideas.

But the spiritual and the self are No separate forces in the mind of the French, Belgo-Congolese artist tiffanie delune: “What guides my practice is something that is already inside me”, he says. “It’s hard to explain, but maybe it’s a mix of your ancestors, your soul, and all your other influences and travels.” His last body of work was done in Accra and exhibited at the City Gallery in 1957, featuring floral motifs at the forefront of an ultra-bright palette.

“What really comes through in af Klint’s work today is the interconnectedness of things,” concludes Abdel Nabi. “The ecological perspective that structures his work, asking questions about the very fragile and delicate relationships that make up our universe, is something we have never been more aware of. He thought of his work as something for future generations, and I think we are that generation.”

Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Ways of life It is at the Tate Modern until September 3