Who was Helma? Af Klint exhibition to highlight the exclusion of women from abstract art | Hilma af Klint

Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died believing that the world was not prepared for the mysterious paintings that would shock the art world half a century later.

The painter, who is now credited with pioneering the abstract art movement, did not seek recognition after her avant-garde works were rejected by her peers. Instead, she ordered it hidden for 20 years after her death and never sold.

Now the seer and mystic, who believed she was guided by higher spirits, will have her first solo exhibition in France, more than 80 years after her death.

An exhibition organized by the Grand Palais and the Center Pompidou will celebrate what is described as her magnum opus, Paintings for the Temple, which she produced while part of a spiritual women’s group that shared utopian visions.

Pascal Rousseau, the exhibition’s curator, said France had ignored Af Klint for too long, and that the event was part of an international reassessment of the artist’s work and “the role of women in the field of modern art.”

“This exhibition highlights the many sources of inspiration in her work and questions how art history has long overlooked women artists and their contributions to foundational movements,” he said.

Even today, af Klint’s name is not immediately recognizable, unlike her male successors Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich, who declared themselves the inventors of abstraction. When af ​​Klint’s works were finally shown outside Sweden in the 1980s, marking the first in several decades, the art history books had to be rewritten.

Born in 1862, Af Klint was one of the first women admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, where she trained as a classical painter. She produced much of her best work as a member of the Theosophical Society and “The Five,” a spiritual group she formed with four other women. Theosophy, which was popular in artistic circles at the end of the 19th century, was described as a form of occultism involving esoteric or supernatural beliefs.

Russo said Clint believes in angels, reincarnation and messages from other worlds.

“It was a crazy obsession that lasted 30 years, but what’s incredible is what she did with it, that she used it to produce such original and pioneering work,” he said.

Af Klint produced and sold classic portraits and landscapes, but kept her spiritual paintings secret, convinced that the world would not understand the secret signs and mystical symbols contained within them.

At least one museum in Stockholm refused to display works by women painters, and when she persuaded the philosopher and artist Rudolf Steiner, also a Theosophist, to view her works in 1908, he was not enthusiastic, suggesting that they were of little value.

Before her death in 1944, she instructed that her works, including more than 1,200 paintings and 126 illustrated sketchbooks, remain sealed for 20 years and never be sold.

Art expert Professor Caroline Levis said that Af Klint felt above worldly concerns and deliberately chose not to communicate with her contemporaries, which increased her mystery.

“Actually, she didn’t want her work to be in a museum, she wanted it to be in a temple,” Levis said. “It was the spiritual aspect that appealed to her.” “I think her attitude was: This is art for the future and people will eventually understand it.”

Apart from some small shows in Sweden, her paintings were not shown to a wider audience until 1986, in Los Angeles. She only gained international attention after 230 of her works were shown at a 2013 exhibition in Stockholm. Three years later, a show was held at the Serpentine Gallery in London, then moved to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where it broke attendance records with nearly 600,000 visitors.

Her autobiography was published in 2022 and the following year she was the subject of an Oscar-nominated film.

“Even after they were first discovered in the 1980s, they were often overlooked. In 2012, MoMa [in New York] “We had an abstract art exhibit that didn’t include her, which is crazy,” Levis said.

“Now she is given her rightful place in the history of abstract art, but that means we have had to rethink that history. What she did was experimental, new and impressive. She certainly practiced abstract art first.”

The Paris exhibition includes Clint’s “Ten Largest Paintings”, a series of paintings on paper mounted on canvas, each measuring approximately 3.3 x 2.4 meters (10.8 x 7.9 ft).

“It is very fragile and in need of restoration, so this may be the last chance to see it for a while,” Rousseau added.