Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, No. 3, Youth, 1907 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Moderna Museet Malmö presents the fascinating and ground-breaking Swedish artist Hilma af Klint in a comprehensive presentation. The exhibition presents, among other works, the series The Ten Largest, which will be shown in it’s entirety in a monumental format and with a color palette that challenged the dominant canon of the day.

The exhibition features further works from the series The Paintings for the Temple as well as a selection that examines the artist’s research into the natural world and how the visible and invisible worlds are connected. In addition, the extensive exhibition touches on the artist’s own thoughts about her work and its various methods.

Hilma af Klint, The Large Figure Paintings, No. 5, 1907 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, No. 2, Childhood, 1907 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, No. 7, Adulthood, 1907 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

In 2013, Moderna Museet presented Hilma af Klint: Abstract Pioneer, which became the most visited exhibition of a Swedish artist in the museum’s history. Since then, Hilma af Klint’s work has traveled the world, encountered new audiences, and won new recognition, most recently at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Hilma af Klint, The Evolution, No. 9, 1908 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint, Group 2, No title, No. 14a–No. 21, 1919 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint, The Evolution, No. 7, 1908 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was a pioneer of abstraction. As early as 1906 she had developed a rich, symbolic imagery that preceded the more broadly recognized emergence of abstract art. Since her retrospective at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2013, interest in the Swedish artist has increased all over the world. The exhibition “Hilma af Klint – Artist, Researcher, Medium” further expands our understanding of this groundbreaking artist and researcher.

Hilma af Klint, The Swan, No. 17, 1915 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint, Parsifal, No. 69, 1916 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint, The Swan, No. 1, 1915 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1882 to 1887 where she focused on naturalistic landscape and portrait paintings. Like many of her contemporaries, af Klint also had a keen interest in invisible dimensions that exist beyond the visible world. When painting she was convinced that she was in contact with higher consciousness, which conveyed messages through her. Her major series, The Paintings for the Temple, became the crux of this artistic inquiry.

Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, No. 9, Old Age, group IV, 1907 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk. Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint, Primordial Chaos, No. 10, 1906 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint, The Dove, no. 9, 1915 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk. Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

The exhibition centers on three aspects of Hilma af Klint’s life and interests – as artist, researcher and medium – that are key to revealing and understanding her art. With few exceptions, af Klint never exhibited her abstract works during her lifetime. Yet she left us with a radical body of work – unprecedented in its use of color, scale and composition – which she hoped future audiences might be better able to sense and decode. Hilma af Klint made paintings for the future, and that future is now.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a comprehensive catalog has been been produced.

Hilma af Klint / Artist, Researcher, Medium
April 4, 2020 – February 21, 2021 / Moderna Museet, Malmo
Curators: Iris Müller-Westermann and Milena Høgsberg
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