![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hilma Af Klint
Jun. 15th, 2013 12:39 pmThis artist's work just came to my attention yesterday.
My friend Rose came over to me and told me to type Hilma Af Klint into Google Images – that it would be best for me to simply see the beautiful images come up without any words of description – so I did as she said, and wonderful abstract images filled my screen.
I thought they were lovely, perhaps painted in the 60's or 70's when large colour field painting was in vogue. What I didn't expect was that they were actually painted much, much earlier by a woman who communicated with the spirit world, and that she was guided by unseen entities to produce them.
They are quite obviously abstract in nature, and predate Kandinsky's work by a number of years. This is important because his paintings are considered the earliest abstract paintings ever created. But Hilma Af Klint kept her paintings out of the public eye and never exhibited them. In her will she stipulated that they could not be shown until 20 years after her death, as she knew they were ahead of their time and would not be understood. It's a fascinating story. An exhibition of her paintings just opened here in Berlin, and I can't wait to go see them in person.
My friend Rose came over to me and told me to type Hilma Af Klint into Google Images – that it would be best for me to simply see the beautiful images come up without any words of description – so I did as she said, and wonderful abstract images filled my screen.
I thought they were lovely, perhaps painted in the 60's or 70's when large colour field painting was in vogue. What I didn't expect was that they were actually painted much, much earlier by a woman who communicated with the spirit world, and that she was guided by unseen entities to produce them.
They are quite obviously abstract in nature, and predate Kandinsky's work by a number of years. This is important because his paintings are considered the earliest abstract paintings ever created. But Hilma Af Klint kept her paintings out of the public eye and never exhibited them. In her will she stipulated that they could not be shown until 20 years after her death, as she knew they were ahead of their time and would not be understood. It's a fascinating story. An exhibition of her paintings just opened here in Berlin, and I can't wait to go see them in person.
