Hilma af Klint
Hilma af Klint ( born October 26, 1862 Karlberg Palace in Solna, † 21 October 1944 Djursholm ) was a Swedish painter. Do not put her large oeuvre, which was inspired by the occult, life, and decreed that it should be issued earlier than 20 years after her death. Only in the 1980s, her works were internationally known and recognized. It is now considered a pioneer of abstract painting and one of the outstanding painters of the early 20th century.
Life and work
Childhood, school and education
Hilma af Klint was in Solna, the fourth child of Mathilda Sunday († 1920) and Victor af Klint († 1898) was born at Castle Karlberg on 26 October 1862. His father was a wealthy officer in the Swedish navy, the family. In 1872 the family moved from Karl Berg on the Nortullsgatan in Stockholm; at the Riddargatan she attended a girls' school. From 1880 to 1882, she studied at the Swedish Academy in addition to Kerstin Cardon portraiture. She was one of the first women painters, the 1882-1887 studied painting at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm, after that institution had also granted women from 1864 to the access. Her teachers there were, among others, Georg von Rosen and August Malmström. Hilma af Klint remained unmarried and childless. After graduating the Academy of Arts in 1887 Hilma af Klint painted in his own studio. First, they created naturalistic landscapes and portraits according to their academic training and often to order.
Occult influences, Spiritual Search
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The early death of her sister Hermione raised her interest in religion and spiritualism. Already in 1879, at the age of 17, she participated in séances. Like many artists and intellectuals of her generation, she became interested in Theosophy and in 1888 she joined the Theosophical Society (TG ) and followed in 1895 after the split of the Theosophical Society Adyar same ( Adyar -TG). An Edvard Munch, in the immediate vicinity of her studio had an exhibition in 1894, she was interested, as he picturesquely gave expression to psychological states. Painting beyond the naturalistic expression was the result for them. Looking for a spiritual dimension, even in art, she took off in 1886 with four other women regularly participated in meetings of the group " De Fem " ("The Five " ) in part; in this community, she served as the medium itself. The group documented their experiences in notebooks and practiced long before the Surrealist automatic drawing and writing. From 1900 to 1901 she was employed as a draftsman and painter in the " Veterinärinstitutet " (Animal Medical College ). In November 1906, earlier than the commonly regarded as pioneers of abstract painting artist painted the first series of small abstract paintings. It marks the beginning of a period, which culminated later in the large-format series paintings for the Temple, a project that eventually included 193 paintings, mostly abstract, their central oeuvre.
Anthroposophy
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In 1908 she first met Rudolf Steiner, at that time Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, who visited Sweden. She hoped that he interpretations of her paintings. Steiner visited her studio, interpreted and did not analyze their works and was critical in relation to the nature of their media inspirations. As a result, she heard for four years to paint everything with the exception of a portrait in 1910. When they had 1912 at the Temple series, it was independent of media influences. Your compositions seem increasingly stringent: the organic structure of earlier years gave way to geometric shapes. She turned more and more to Steiner's Anthroposophy and joined the Anthroposophical Society in 1920. After her nearly blind mother, who had for years supplied the death, she had more time to travel and visited the first Goetheanum in Dornach, where she met Steiner again. In the following decades they stayed several times for months at the. After turning to anthroposophy she developed in the 1920s, one of them influenced style.
In life, it prohibited any exhibition of her abstract works and decreed in his will that they were allowed to be shown to the public until 20 years after her death, she died in 1944. A large number of works was not known to the public for a long time and was stored at her nephew and heir Erik af Klint. In the early 1980s made this the stock for a few art historians and theologians accessible. Finally, their total factory area of more than 1000 plants and 125 notebooks came into the care of Hilma af Klint Stiftelsen Verk in Stockholm that it manages and published today. By the will of the painter a well-defined central convolute their works may never be sold.
Reception
It was the Swedish art historian Ake Fant, who introduced in the 1980s, Hilma af Klint in the international art world. Hilma af Klint in 1984, he presented at a Nordic conference in Helsinki. Two years later, in 1986, some of their works side were on side shown with the pioneers of abstract art such as Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, and Picabia in the set up by Maurice Tuchman exhibition The Spiritual in Art, Los Angeles, Chicago and The Hague to Fant wrote the catalog essay. In the German-speaking af Klint was first introduced to the art-loving audience at the Great Exhibition occult and avant-garde in 1995 in Frankfurt.
Among the major retrospective in 2013 at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, which is then shown at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Museo Picasso in Malaga and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, published extensive catalogs. Many works shown in this exhibition for the first time about 100 years after its creation. Also in 2013 some works by Hilma af Klint be exhibited at the Venice Biennale.
For her life's work is cited as art historical evidence that this part of the visual language of abstract art was influenced by occult arts. Hilma af Klint applies as a pioneer of abstract and mystical art.