Hilma Af Klint - Life, Works & Painting Style | Great Artists simply Explained in 3 minutes!

Hilma af Klint was a Swedish painter, spiritualist and a pioneer of abstract painting.
She did not exhibit her extensive work, which was inspired by occultism, for the rest of her life and decreed that it should not be shown for at least 20 years after her death.

She was born in 1862 at Karlberg Castle in Solna, Sweden. She came from a wealthy family and was one of the first female painters to study at the Swedish Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm.

She then worked in a studio at the Academy. She made a living from her art, creating landscapes and portraits in a naturalistic style before later developing her abstract painting style.
Her artistic work was significantly shaped by the spiritual influences of her five friends, with whom she formed a spiritual group called "The Five". In séances, they allegedly received messages from higher beings who called themselves Gregor, Clemens, Amaliel, Esther or Ananda.

They documented their experiences in notebooks. At the turn of the century, she worked as a draughtswoman at the Veterinary Institute, where she also painted botanical watercolor studies.
She later used her large-format works to decorate her new studio on the island of Munsö, which she had built with financial support.

She remained unmarried, had no children and died at the age of 81 as a result of a fall. She stipulated that her abstract works could not be exhibited until at least 20 years after her death. It was not until the 1980s that her works became internationally known and recognized. Her painting style was revolutionary.

Early in her career, she turned away from traditional depictions and explored abstract forms. Her works are characterized by vibrant colors, complex symbols and geometric patterns that give a deep insight into her spiritual quest.

She also explored the technique of automatic writing. The pencil drawings include motifs such as snails, lilies and roses, which the artist later developed further in a large cycle. She worked in abstract color pastels. Floral, abstract motifs alternate with geometric forms. The predominant colors are blue, yellow, white, red and pink; blue stands for the feminine and yellow for the masculine principle.

Her central work was the series "The Paintings to the Temple", consisting of 193 works. These abstract paintings represented immortal aspects of the human being and were commissioned by a spirit being named Amaliel during a séance.
Further works were created for this series, including the series "The Swan" and "The Dove". Here, too, she created the works under the influence of higher beings, but much more independently than before.

Her later works differ from her earlier works in terms of content and form. She created metaphysical paintings with a more independent approach, mainly with watercolor and pen and ink in smaller formats. (Parzifal and Atom series)

Her artistic oeuvre comprises 1000 paintings and drawings and 125 notebooks. Today her works are shown side by side with the pioneers of abstract art such as Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian.