Hilma af Klint was a pioneering artist and spiritual visionary whose work prefigured abstract art, emerging not from aesthetic trends but from a profound inner calling to depict the unseen forces of the universe. Long before abstraction was formally introduced to the mainstream art world, af Klint was painting vast, radiant, symbolic compositions guided by what she described as higher spiritual intelligences. For her, art was not self-expression—it was revelation, a sacred task entrusted to her by the spirit world.
Born in Sweden in 1862, af Klint received formal training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and was accomplished in naturalistic painting. Yet her most important work took place in private, driven by her deep involvement in esoteric spirituality. She was a member of various spiritualist and theosophical circles, including the Theosophical Society and later the Anthroposophical movement founded by Rudolf Steiner. In 1896, she co-founded a group called The Five with four other women, dedicated to spiritual communication and inner development. They held regular séances and claimed to receive messages and guidance from spiritual beings they called the "High Masters."
Between 1906 and 1915, under the instruction of these entities, af Klint created The Paintings for the Temple, an extraordinary series of large-scale works intended to communicate spiritual truths. These paintings—abstract, vibrant, filled with symbols, spirals, letters, and organic forms—were utterly unlike anything else being produced at the time. They were, in her own words, “painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings and with great force.” She believed she was acting as a medium, translating messages from higher planes into visual form.
Af Klint’s paintings are not abstract in a purely formal sense; they are symbolic maps of consciousness, cycles of life and death, spiritual evolution, and cosmic dualities. They often reference polarities—male and female, light and dark, spirit and matter—expressed in colour, form, and mirrored geometries. Her use of spirals and evolving organic shapes reflects a worldview in which all life is in motion, evolving toward spiritual unity.
Though her work was visionary, af Klint was aware that the world was not ready to understand it. She left instructions that her esoteric paintings not be shown until at least 20 years after her death. As a result, she remained virtually unknown for decades, her work held quietly in storage by a foundation established in her name. It was only in recent years that her astonishing contribution to modern art has been fully acknowledged, radically reshaping the story of abstraction’s origins.
Hilma af Klint’s art is not simply about aesthetics—it is about knowledge, transformation, and spiritual awakening. Her paintings form a visual language of the soul, a kind of sacred geometry for the modern age. They are meditative, luminous, and charged with the sense of a deeper order. Through her, the invisible became visible.
Her legacy is now recognised not just as a precursor to abstraction, but as a true spiritual pioneer—an artist who dared to give form to the formless, guided by faith, intuition, and the mysterious voices of a higher realm.
