Hilma af Klint

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Swedish

Photograph of the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint
Anonymous. Photograph of the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) at her art studio on Hamngatan in Stockholm

Biography

Hilma af Klint was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings are considered to be among the first major abstract works in Western art history. A considerable body of her work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian. She belonged to a group called "The Five", a circle of women inspired by Theosophy who shared a belief in the importance of trying to contact the "High Masters", often through séances.

Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.

Why she matters today

Hilma af Klint is the perfect example of:

Art history is not fixed—it’s constantly rewritten

Great artists can exist outside the system

And sometimes, the most radical ideas arrive too early to be understood

She turns the classic narrative upside down: abstraction wasn’t just modern—it was also mystical, intuitive, and deeply personal.

“Those granted the gift of seeing more deeply can see beyond form and concentrate on the wondrous aspect hiding behind every form, which is called life.”

Did you know?

Many of her paintings were supposedly “dictated” by spirits, making her more like a medium than a traditional artist, so her family actually refused to donate her works to museums for years, thinking they were too strange.

Hilma af Klint deliberately kept her work secret, making her work was ignored for decades, and the “official” story of abstraction was written without her.

Official Website

Current exhibitions featuring Hilma af Klint