Paintings for the Future

Hilma af Klint’s Bold Abstract Paintings Exude Mysterious Charm In 1944, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint passed away at the age of 81, leaving behind over 1,000 paintings and works on paper, which she had kept largely secret during her lifetime. She believed that the world was not yet ready to embrace her art, and thus promised that these works would only be made public 20 years later. However, it was not until recent decades that the public had the opportunity to appreciate Klint’s radical abstract painting practice, which predated Wassily Kandinsky and other artists widely considered as pioneers of modernist abstraction.

Her boldly colored, large-scale works reflect her ambitious and spiritual attempts to depict an invisible, comprehensive world order by merging natural and geometric forms, textual elements, and esoteric symbolism. "Hilma af Klint: Paintings of the Future" is a companion exhibition to Klint’s first major exhibition in the United States, which not only showcases her groundbreaking painting series but also expands recent research to present the fullest picture of her life and art.

The essays in the book explore the social, intellectual, and artistic contexts of Klint’s departure from figurative painting in 1906 and its subsequent development, placing her in the context of Swedish modernism and folk art traditions, contemporary scientific discoveries, as well as spiritualism and mysticism movements. Roundtable discussions among contemporary artists, scholars, and curators explore Klint’s creative sources and their relevance to 21st-century art. The book also delves into her unrealized plan to construct a spiral temple to display her artworks—a wish that found an accidental answer in the exhibition venue, the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum. Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) is now regarded as a pioneer of abstract art. Although her paintings were not publicly exhibited until 1987, her early 20th-century works predate the first purely abstract paintings by Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich.