Picture
The Ten Largest, No. 8, Adulthood oil, tempera and paper Hilma af Klint (1907)

Abstract Thinking: Theosophy and Art
By David Orr​

When the blockbuster exhibition of Hilma af Klint’s paintings, Paintings for the Future, opened at the Guggenheim Museum in the fall of 2018, the backstory had the feeling of prophecy. She was a relatively unknown painter who was ahead of her own time; in fact, she insisted that her work not be shown publicly until two decades after her death in order that culture might catch up. She pioneered abstraction well before the canonical male vanguard which included Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Kazimir Malevich, László Moholy-Nagy, and Piet Mondrian. Her work was barely seen for fifty years, and Klint imagined one day having her work installed in ‘a spiral temple.’ In light of this, Frank Lloyd Wright’s snail-shell design of the iconic Guggenheim rotunda seemed an uncanny venue. Indeed, Paintings for the Future seemed preordained. 

Yet a central influence on her life and work—and on all the early abstractionists mentioned above—was treated as a curiosity in the Guggenheim catalog: Theosophy.

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