Exceptional Works: Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint, Tree of Knowledge, No. 1, 1913–1915 (detail). Above: Hilma af Klint at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, c. 1881 (detail). Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation

“I am so small, I am so insignificant, yet within me wells such a power that I have to move forward.”

—Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper in eight (8) parts
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (each) 45.7 x 29.5 cm
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (each) 70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, No. 1, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (45.7 x 29.5 cm)
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm)

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, No. 2, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (45.7 x 29.5 cm)
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm)

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, No. 3, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (45.7 x 29.5 cm)
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm)

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, No. 4, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (45.7 x 29.5 cm)
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm)

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, No. 5, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (45.7 x 29.5 cm)
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm)

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, No. 6, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (45.7 x 29.5 cm)
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm)

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, No. 7a, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (45.7 x 29.5 cm)
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm)

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, No. 7b, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (45.7 x 29.5 cm)
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm)

Hilma af Klint
Tree of Knowledge, 1913-1915
Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on paper in eight (8) parts
Sheet: 18 x 11 5/8 inches (each) 45.7 x 29.5 cm
Framed: 27 7/8 x 21 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches (each) 70.8 x 54.3 x 4.4 cm

Tree of Knowledge (1913–1915) is a rare set of watercolors by Hilma af Klint. One of two versions, the present set was recently rediscovered in Switzerland; the other version, along with the majority of the artist’s groundbreaking work, is held in the collection of the Hilma af Klint Foundation.

This presentation and accompanying exhibition at the gallery’s uptown location in New York is a singular opportunity to experience af Klint’s radical, revelatory art—itself a secret for many decades—which has come to be recognized as some of the most important and inventive of the last century.

Portrait of Rudolf Steiner c. 1905

The First Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, designed by Rudolf Steiner in 1913–1920; destroyed in a fire on December 31, 1922

Rudolf Steiner with a model of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, 1914. Photo by Otto Rietmann. Rudolf Steiner Archives, Dornach

A view of the interior of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, 1914. Rudolf Steiner Archives, Dornach

It was not known that af Klint had made two versions of the Tree of Knowledge series until the recent rediscovery of this set in the Albert Steffen Stiftung in Dornach, Switzerland.

In the early 1920s, af Klint appears to have given these watercolors as a gift to Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the spiritual and philosophical movement known as Anthroposophy, for the Goetheanum, a building he designed for the Anthroposophical Society. Around 1927, the works came into the possession of Albert Steffen, who became president of the Anthroposophical Society after Steiner’s death in 1925.

Born in Solna, outside Stockholm, af Klint studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, where she gained a reputation as an accomplished painter of naturalistic portraits and landscapes. Upon graduating in 1888, she established herself as an artist, and served briefly as the secretary of the Association of Swedish Women Artists.

When af Klint began making vibrant, symbolic paintings as early as 1906, her work was radically unlike anything that had come before, and preceded the abstract work of artists such Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich by several years.

Hilma af Klint in her studio at Hamngatan, Stockholm, c.1895 (detail). Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation

Hilma af Klint, Cress, 1890s (detail). Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation

Af Klint wasn’t directly engaged in avant-garde circles or art movements, and instead came to abstraction through her own artistic and personal development.

Like many of her peers, she was profoundly interested in spiritual movements and philosophies, including the then emergent teachings of Theosophy and Anthroposophy as well as Buddhism and Rosicrucianism, among others. In 1904, she joined the Swedish Lodge of the Theosophical Society, which, in seeking to bridge Eastern and Western philosophies, emphasizes the commonality of human culture.

The interior of Hilma af Klint’s home, 1930. Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation

Hilma af Klint, Summer Landscape, 1888 (detail). Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation

Af Klint became actively involved in examining the mysteries of the supernatural world, and her interest in visualizing invisible forces led her to explore and represent spiritualist ideas and sentiments in her art. In 1896, she began meeting with a group of like-minded women who called themselves “The Five” and held séances to communicate with the spiritual realm.

Photo of the Altar for The Five. Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation

Photo of the Seance room. Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation

L–R: Finnur Magnússon, Yggdrasill, 1859. Norman B. Leventhal Map Center Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston, MA; “Ultramicroscopic seeing” of matter: the “ultimate” physical atom, Occult Chemistry by A. Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, 1908; Page from “Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians of the 16th and 17th Centuries”, 1785–1788. University of Wisconsin-Madison Special Collections, Madison, WI

A page from a notebook by The Five, 1913. Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation

Automatic drawing by The Five, 1903. Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation

In 1906, af Klint accepted her major spiritual “commission”: over the next nine years she created a series of 193 visionary works that she titled Paintings for the Temple, the imagery of which was conveyed to her through a medium. These profound, elaborate compositions constitute some of the earliest abstract paintings in the history of Western art.

Installation view, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo by David Heald

Installation view, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The five works from the second set of the Tree of Knowledge can be seen at center. Photo by David Heald

Installation view, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo by David Heald

Af Klint created the Tree of Knowledge series in 1913 and 1915. This work forms part of af Klint’s Paintings for the Temple.

The artist draws on iconography from belief systems including Christianity, Hinduism, and Norse mythology that are combined with her own spiritual and religious imagery in a unique synthesis. As Julia Voss writes, “Tree of Knowledge depicts a development. Everything is in motion; everything is growing and pulsating. As is often the case in af Klint’s works, there are two overlapping levels, one biographical and one that relates to the history of humanity.”

“Each of the … pictures in this series is to be considered as a prototype of a new period.”

—Hilma af Klint, from an inscription on the back of the Tree of Knowledge series, 1913–1915

A page from a notebook by Hilma af Klint that relates to Tree of Knowledge. Photo by Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation. A translation of the text reads: “Extending over the circle. From its forehead emanate four light forces upwards, from the back of its head four down-pulling forces, from the hands the spectra, but to show that all this shall return to the united concept of the spectra, they are presented in white and pink. The man shall be contoured with white, the head turned upwards. The triangle is white and shall enclose the circle and the ellipses . . . ”

These compositions also feature esoteric iconography and vivid colors and motifs. Undulating, organic forms call to mind the stylings of art nouveau and Jugendstil with an almost taxonomic attention to detail that recalls the symbols of Rosicrucianism, a movement af Klint was familiar with. Vectors and geometric forms further map the movement and direction of forces.

L–R: Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve, 1526 (detail). The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust). © The Courtauld; Illustration by Bernhard Pankok, Jugend, 1896; Page from “Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians of the 16th and 17th Centuries”, 1785–1788 (detail). University of Wisconsin-Madison Special Collections, Madison, WI

“Her reappearance finally settles the question raised in Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ There have been, but their achievements reach us in circuitous ways.”

—Roberta Smith, The New York Times, 2018

Hilma af Klint, Tree of Knowledge, No. 3, 1913–1915 (detail)

Hilma af Klint: Tree of Knowledge

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