Hilma af Klint (1862 - 1944). Hilma af Klint was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings were among the first Western abstract art. A considerable body of her abstract work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky. She belonged to a group called The Five, a circle of women who shared her belief in the importance of trying to make contact with the so-called High Masters, often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas. The fourth child of Captain Victor af Klint, a Swedish naval commander, and Mathilda af Klint, Hilma af Klint spent summers with her family at their manor Hanmora on the island of Adelsö in Lake Mälaren. In these idyllic surroundings Hilma came into contact with nature at an early stage in her life; and this deep association with natural forms was to be an inspiration in her work. Later in life, Hilma af Klint came to live on a permanent basis at Munsö, an island next to Adelsö. From her family, Hilma af Klint inherited a great interest for mathematics and botany. She showed an early ability in visual art, and after the family moved to Stockholm, she studied at Tekniska skolan in Stockholm, where she learned portraiture and landscape painting.She was admitted at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at the age of twenty. During the years 1882-1887 she studied mainly drawing, and portrait-and landscape painting. She graduated with honors, and was allocated a scholarship in the form of a studio in the so-called Atelier Building, owned by The Academy of Fine Arts in the crossing between Hamngatan and Kungsträdgården in central Stockholm. This was the main cultural hub in the Swedish capital at that time. The same building also held Blanch's Café and Blanchs Art Gallery, where the conflict stood between the conventional art view of the Academy of Fine Arts, and the opposition movement of the Art Society, inspired by the French En Plein Air painters.Hilma af Klint began working in Stockholm, gaining recognition for her landscapes, botanical drawings, and portraits. Her conventional painting became the source of financial income. But her life's work remained a quite separate practice. In 1880 her younger sister Hermina died, and it was at this time that the spiritual dimension of her life began to develop. Her interest in abstraction and symbolism came from Hilma af Klint's involvement in spiritism, very much in vogue at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Hilma's first experiments in spiritual investigation began in 1879. Hilma af Klint became interested in the Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky and the philosophy of Christian Rosencreutz. In 1908 she met Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Anthroposophical Society, who was on a visit to Stockholm. Steiner initiated her in his own theories regarding the Arts, and would have a certain influence on her paintings later in life. Several years later, in 1920, she met him again at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, the headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society. Between 1921 and 1930 she spent long periods at the Goetheanum. Af Klint's work can be understood in the wider context of the Modernist search for new forms in artistic, spiritual, political and scientific systems at the beginning of the 20th century. One will find the same interest in spirituality in other artists during this same period, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malevitch and the French Nabis of which many were, like af Klint, inspired by the Theosophical Movement. However, the artistic transition to abstract art and the nonfigurative painting of Hilma af Klint would occur without any contacts with the contemporary modern movements. The works of Hilma af Klint are mainly spiritual, and her artistic work is a consequence of this. At the Academy of Fine Arts she met Anna Cassel, the first of the four women with whom she later worked in The Five, a group of artists who shared her ideas, Cassel, Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman, and Mathilda Nilsson. The Five began their association as members of the Edelweiss Society, which embraced a combination of the Theosophical teachings of Helena Blavatsky and spiritualism. The group of female artists The Five was engaged in the paranormal and regularly organized spiritistic séances. They opened each meeting with a prayer, followed by a meditation, a Christian sermon, and a review and analysis of a text from the New Testament. All of this would then be followed by a séance. They recorded in a book a completely new system of mystical thoughts in the form of messages from higher spirits, called The High Masters.
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