{"id":2880,"date":"2021-03-14T14:32:03","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T14:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.susaneleyfineart.com\/news\/?p=2880"},"modified":"2021-03-23T15:28:59","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T15:28:59","slug":"the-hilma-af-klint-effect-how-the-future-forward-painter-inspires-artists-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.susaneleyfineart.com\/news\/?p=2880","title":{"rendered":"The Hilma af Klint Effect: How the Future-Forward Painter Inspires Artists Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The early-20th-century Swedish abstractionist took artistic cues from spiritualist writings and occult practices. Now, 21st-century creators are taking cues from her.<\/em><\/p>\n

by Liz Logan | March 14, 2021<\/p>\n

Mystically inclined modernist painter\u00a0Hilma af Klint<\/a>\u00a0is having a moment \u2014 which is somewhat surprising, considering the enigmatic artist died more than 70 years ago. Born in Sweden in 1862, af Klint studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, in Stockholm, and made her living painting portraits and landscapes. At the same time, she was independently following an unconventional creative path that involved attempting to communicate with other worlds.<\/p>\n

Like many artists of her era, af Klint studied spiritualist writings, and in 1889, she joined the Swedish lodge of the Theosophical Society. She and four other artists began meeting regularly to pursue occult practices, including holding s\u00e9ances. They kept notebooks about their experiences and made automatic drawings, letting their hands move randomly across the page, channeling the will of spirits or the subconscious. Eventually, they found six spiritual guides, who in 1904 asked that a series of paintings be made for a temple in their honor. Af Klint took on the commission and began her 200-work series,\u00a0The Paintings for the Temple<\/em>\u00a0(1906\u201315).<\/p>\n

The results were, fittingly, otherworldly. Af Klint\u2019s paintings, made with tempera on paper, were exuberantly colorful and full of richly kinetic forms, both geometric and biomorphic. They were also radically abstract, eschewing representation well before the traditionally credited male pioneers of this style \u2014\u00a0Piet Mondrian<\/a>,\u00a0Wassily Kandinsky<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Kazimir Malevich<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 had their breakthroughs during World War I.<\/p>\n

Af Klint was prolific, but she rarely exhibited her pieces; she knew she was onto something new and exciting that the art establishment of her day wasn\u2019t prepared for. She stipulated that her work not be shown until 20 years after her death, which occurred in 1944.<\/p>\n

It would be 40 more years before her paintings were shown. More recently, a full picture of her accomplishments has emerged, most notably through the first major solo exhibition of her work in the U.S., Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future<\/em><\/a>, mounted at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2018. That show rocked the art world, earning widespread praise from critics and drawing the largest audience in the museum\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Now that af Klint\u2019s work has become more widely known, many of today\u2019s creators have found in her and her oeuvre a wellspring of inspiration. Here are six artists who see her as a heroic figure \u2014 perhaps even a spirit guide herself.<\/p>\n

Rachelle Krieger<\/h3>\n