Hilma af Klint - Geometric Series and Other Works 1917–1920

Hilma af Klint: Geometric Series and Other Works 1917–1920, Catalogue Raisonné Volume V / ISBN 9789189069268 / 208-page hardback, 9.75 x 12.5 inches, published by Bokförlaget Stolpe

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On af Klint’s use of botany and science to elaborate her spiritual vision

During the last years of the 1910s, Hilma af Klint created several series of small paintings in which she systematically explored an abstract idiom with the help of ruler and compasses. The triangles, squares, circles, and ellipses that appear here in constantly new constellations express a spiritual dynamic, according to af Klint’s notebooks from these years. Hilma af Klint considered this work a kind of research, and she used ‘spiritual scientific’ methods – a term borrowed from anthroposophy – in order to understand the evolution and development of mankind. In her studies of living beings, she gained insight into an abstract world of geometrical conditions and guidelines.

Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) is now regarded as a pioneer of abstract art. Though her paintings were not seen publicly until 1987, her work from the early 20th century predates the first purely abstract paintings by Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich.