Ghosts, Girlfriends and the Guggenheim: Hilma af Klint, Theosophy, and the Birth of Abstraction (and How It Stayed Hidden for a Century)
Hosted by Kristie Dowling, MA in English Literature, Teacher of English, Journalism and Art History, Shorecrest Preparatory School
For years, most of the world credited Wassily Kandinsky with the first abstract painting in 1911. Not until a century later did we come to realize that a virtually unknown Swedish woman named Hilma af Klint had traveled a parallel journey in abstraction with Kandinsky, but did so in 1906—years before Kandinsky or anyone else had made the breakthrough. Both artists were part of a growing movement in spiritualism called theosophy, attending lectures by the same man, and yet never met. It was only after a 2019 exhibit at the Guggenheim in New York titled “Paintings for the Future” did the world truly come to see Hilma as the missing puzzle piece in the birth of abstraction. While Kandinsky was busy writing manifestos proclaiming his accomplishment, Hilma decided to hide hers. Sure the world was not ready to view her paintings, when she died, she directed her nephew to keep her paintings hidden for at least 20 years. They didn’t re-emerge until the 1980’s. And she never took credit for them. Instead, according to Klint, a ghost named Amaliel told her and the other five women in her seance group what to paint. The results are a group of stunning images, which, when studied, present a stunningly strange tale of the art world at the turn of the 20th century.
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