Author(s): Julia Voss

Art | Sweden | Women's Histories | Biography and Memoir

A highly anticipated biography of the enigmatic and popular Swedish painter.   The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before.  Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe.  But this is only part of her story.  Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic.

Like many of the artists at the turn of the twentieth century who developed some version of abstract painting, af Klint studied Theosophy, which holds that science, art, and religion are all reflections of an underlying life-form that can be harnessed through meditation, study, and experimentation. Well before Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction, af Klint was working in a nonrepresentational mode, producing a powerful visual language that continues to speak to audiences today.

The exhibition of her work in 2018 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City attracted more than 600,000 visitors, making it the most-attended show in the history of the institution.   Despite her enormous popularity, there has not yet been a biography of af Klint - until now.

Inspired by her first encounter with the artist's work in 2008, Julia Voss set out to learn Swedish and research af Klint's life - not only who the artist was but what drove and inspired her.  The result is a fascinating biography of an artist who is as great as she is enigmatic.

 "Julia Voss's dazzling and timely biography of Hilma af Klint explores not only the life of this extraordinary artist but highlights the important contributions of both mysticism and women artists-so long excluded from the art-historical canon-to the story of modern art. I couldn't put it down." -- Jennifer Higgie
"Julia Voss's biography is the indispensable resource for anyone interested in pioneering artist Hilma af Klint. With her thousands of pages of notebooks in Swedish, af Klint remained beyond the reach of scholars without the ability to read Swedish. By mastering Swedish and doing superb archival research on af Klint and the women around her, Voss reveals a Hilma we did not know, including a gender fluidity that underlies many of her motifs. Voss has also recovered the cosmopolitan culture of Stockholm in this period-from art exhibitions and science expositions to the robust interest in spiritualism that parallels that in Berlin. Written in lively prose, Voss's book is a pleasure to read in the translation by Anne Posten." -- Linda Henderson, University of Texas at Austin
"A fascinating book on the exhilarating life and work of Hilma af Klint. Julia Voss has been instrumental in bringing her story to the forefront and tells her life with such sensitivity, generosity, and insight. A must read!" -- Katy Hessel, author of The Story of Art without Men

Contents: A Note from the Translator
Chronology

Introduction

Part I. Family, Childhood, and Youth in Stockholm
1. Mary Wollstonecraft Visits Sweden and Is Upset
2. Birth
3. School and Religion
4. An Exhibition in London
5. Bertha Valerius and the Dead
6. Kerstin Cardon's Painting School
7. Hermina's Death

Part II. Study at the Academy and Independent Work
1. The Academy
2. Guardian Spirit
3. The Prize
4. Anna Cassel
5. "My First Experience with Mediumship"
6. The Young Artist
7. Dr. Helleday and Love
8. The Five
9. Art from the Orient
10. Rose and Cross
11. At the Veterinary Institute
12. Children's Books and Decorative Art
13. Italy
14. Genius

Part III. Paintings for the Temple
1. Old Images
2. Revolution
3. Primordial Chaos
4. Eros
5. Medium
6. The Ten Largest
7. "I Was the Instrument of Ecstasy"
8. Rudolf Steiner Visits Sweden
9. The Young Ones
10. Sigrid Lancen
11. The Association of Swedish Women Artists
12. Frank Heyman
13. Island Kingdom in Malaren
14. First Exhibition with the Theosophists
15. Tree of Knowledge
16. The Kiss
17. Singoalla
18. The Baltic Exhibition
19. War
20. Saint George
21. Kandinsky in Stockholm
22. Parsifal and Atom
23. The Studio on Munsoe
24. Thomasine Anderson

Part IV. Dornach, Amsterdam, and London
1. The Suitcase Museum
2. Flowers, Mosses, and Lichens
3. First Visit to the Goetheanum
4. "Belongs to the Astral World According to Doctor Steiner"
5. The Fire and the Letter
6. Amsterdam
7. London

Part V. Temple and Later Years
1. The Temple and the Spiral
2. +x
3. A Temple in New York
4. The London Blitz
5. Future Woman
6. National Socialism
7. Lecture in Stockholm
8. "Degenerate" Art in Germany and Abstract Art in New York
9. Tyra Kleen and the Plan for a Museum
10 Last Months
11. Conclusion

Afterword by Johan af Klint
Afterword by Ulrika af Klint
Appendix 1. Hilma af Klint's Travels and Places of Residence
Appendix 2. The Library of Hilma af Klint
Acknowledgments
Illustration Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Index