Hilma af Klint – abstract art, Paintings for the Temple and the artist of the invisible
Hilma af Klint painted the world’s first abstract art - and yet no one saw it during her lifetime. The Swedish artist and mystic created more than 1,200 abstract works featuring spirals, organic forms, and luminous colors as early as 1906 - years before Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich published their pioneering works. She locked them away and instructed that they not be shown until 20 years after her death. When they finally reached a broad audience through the Guggenheim’s major retrospective in 2018–2019, art history was rewritten.
This page gives you a complete picture of Hilma af Klint’s artistic career: her biography, the most important series of works, the spiritual and occult context, where to find originals - and how her abstract compositions live on in contemporary homes.
Contents
↓ Biography - the artist and mystic
↓ Paintings for the Temple – the great work
↓ The spiritual context
↓ The Guggenheim in 2018 and the rewriting of art history
↓ Where can you find original works?
↓ Hilma af Klint at home
↓ Related artists
↓ Frequently asked questions about Hilma af Klint
Biography - the artist, mystic, and pioneer
Hilma af Klint was born in 1862 in Stockholm, in an environment with broad intellectual interest in natural science, mathematics, and spirituality. She studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and supported herself by producing portraits and botanical illustrations - a respected but conventional artistic life. But alongside this “official” artistic practice, she held seances, studied Theosophy and Anthroposophy, and was deeply influenced by the period’s interest in the occult and the unknown.
Quick facts: Born on October 26, 1862, in Solna, Stockholm. Died on October 21, 1944, in Djursholm. Studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm (graduated in 1887). Created Paintings for the Temple from 1906–1915. Works held by the Hilma af Klint Foundation. Became internationally known through the Guggenheim retrospective of 2018–2019 (600,000 visitors).
The Five - the group that channeled the works
In 1896, Hilma af Klint formed the group “The Five” with four other Swedish women interested in spirituality and spiritualism. The group held regular gatherings where they experimented with automatic writing, mediumship, and spiritual contact. It was in this context - and at the direct urging of what she perceived as spiritual beings, the so-called “High Ones” - that Hilma began creating Paintings for the Temple in 1906.
Paintings for the Temple – the great work
Paintings for the Temple is Hilma af Klint's central work - a series of 193 abstract paintings created between 1906 and 1915, intended to hang in a temple for spiritual contemplation. The series is divided into subseries, each exploring a theme: duality, flowering, the stages of life, the atom's nucleus, evolution. It is an ambitious art project without any direct precedent in its time.
The Ten Largest (1907)
"The Ten Largest" is the best-known subseries - ten monumental canvases (each canvas is over three meters high) depicting the four stages of life: childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. The color palette is warm yellow and orange in the childhood works, deep blue and purple in old age. These works - with their spirals, veils and organic forms against solid-color backgrounds - are the most reproduced and best-known works in Hilma's oeuvre.
The Swan (1914-1915)
The Swans are the most lyrical of af Klint's works - a pair of swans that merge and separate into white and black pairs, above mirror-like expanses of water and abstract backgrounds. They depict the theme of duality - the masculine and feminine, the dark and light, union and separation - in a visual world that is meditatively calm compared with the monumental "The Ten Largest".
The Flower (1906-1907)
One of the early series, The Flower, reveals the botanical aspect of Hilma's work - spiral-shaped flowers and organic forms in a visual world resembling contemporary Art Nouveau, but with a spiritual orientation that transcends the decorative. This is where the connection to the natural-scientific and mystical visual world of the period is clearest.
The spiritual context - Theosophy, Anthroposophy and Steiner
Hilma af Klint worked at the intersection of natural science and spirituality, typical of the intellectual milieu at the turn of the century. She was influenced by Theosophy (Helena Blavatsky's doctrine of a divine order behind the universe) and Anthroposophy (Rudolf Steiner's further development, emphasizing art and spiritual evolution). Rudolf Steiner actually saw Paintings for the Temple when he visited Stockholm in 1908 - and expressed doubts about whether they could be exhibited, something Hilma took very seriously and which contributed to her decision to keep the works secret.
"I do not create from myself. It is not I who paint, but it paints through me." - Hilma af Klint, on the spiritual dimension of her work
Her notebooks - numbering more than 26,000 pages - reveal a systematic thinker who combined scientific powers of observation with spiritual conviction. She drew diagrams, recorded spiritual experiences, and kept a journal of the séances with "The Five". The notebooks are themselves a unique document of the spiritual and intellectual milieu at the turn of the century.
Guggenheim 2018 and the rewriting of art history
When the Guggenheim Museum in New York presented “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future” from October 2018 to April 2019, something unusual happened in art history: a long-deceased artist gained a new audience that changed how we understand the course of art history. 600,000 visitors – one of the Guggenheim's most visited exhibitions ever. The reviews were unanimously astonished: how had we missed this? How had art history, from Kandinsky as one of the fathers of abstract art, gone on for so long?
The answer is: because Hilma herself chose to keep the works hidden. She was convinced that the world was not ready. It is one of the most astonishing paradoxes in art history – the artist who was ahead of her time chose to come last. The Guggenheim exhibition, which later toured to Tate Modern in London and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, has given Hilma af Klint a permanent place among the greatest artists of the 20th century.
Where can you find Hilma af Klint's original works?
Most of af Klint's works are kept by the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm and are regularly loaned to museums around the world. Moderna Museet in Stockholm has presented her in several exhibitions and is the natural starting point for information about where the works are currently on display. The Hilma af Klint Foundation's website publishes loan status and upcoming exhibitions.
Tip: The Guggenheim in New York and Tate Modern in London are the international venues where Hilma's works have been shown most recently and are likely to be exhibited again. Follow the Foundation's newsletter for information about the next major exhibition.
Hilma af Klint at home – how do you place the abstractions?
Hilma af Klint's abstract compositions are among the most charismatic motif choices for a modern home. The warm yellow and orange motifs from “The Ten Largest” – primarily her childhood and youth works – are joyful and energising and work excellently in living rooms, hallways and home offices. The blue-purple Swan motifs are calmer and better suited to bedrooms or reading corners.
All Hilma af Klint motifs need room to breathe: they are too complex and detailed to disappear into a densely arranged gallery wall. The best option is a single motif on a light wall, preferably in a larger format (50×70 or bigger). A simple, thin frame in dark wood or black metal complements her deep colours without competing.
Explore Bozetto's Hilma af Klint collection – “The Ten Largest,” Swan and Flower, printed in large formats on premium paper. Free shipping on orders over SEK 499, 60-day returns.
Related artists
Hilma af Klint's art opens doors to a broader context. Henri Matisse shared her conviction that art can reach the spiritual beyond the visible. Vincent van Gogh used color as an emotional and almost mystical form of expression – a parallel to Hilma's spiritual symbolism. Elsa Beskow is a contemporary Swedish woman who, in her own way, redefined what Swedish art could be. See Bozetto's Hilma af Klint collection and the guide to Hilma af Klint posters. Also see Bozetto's guide to Nordic art – the tradition, history, and artists that defined the Scandinavian visual world. Another groundbreaking woman in modernism is Georgia O'Keeffe, who, like af Klint, followed her own path into abstraction. See the entire Bozetto Knowledge Base for a comprehensive overview of artists, art movements, and interior design guides.
As a spiritual pioneer of abstraction, Hilma af Klint is closely connected to Mark Rothko, whose color field painting a few decades later made color itself the bearer of profound human and almost religious feeling. Her early abstractions also share a spiritual kinship with Wassily Kandinsky, who was seeking pure, spiritual abstraction at roughly the same time. For the full context – the pioneers, the works, and the development of the movement – see our guide to abstract art.
Frequently asked questions about Hilma af Klint
Read also the guide to Hilma af Klint posters - which motifs suit which spaces, and how to combine them with other Nordic artists. See also the gallery wall guide for specific format combinations.