New research and cultural context on the life and art of Hilma af Klint
The 2018 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, introduced the general public to the abstract mystical masterpieces of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944). Based on a seminar held at the Guggenheim Museum at the opening of this acclaimed exhibition, this volume compiles the insights of the seminar’s contributors alongside reproductions of works, archival photographs and images from af Klint’s journals. Hilma af Klint: Visionary explores the social and spiritual movements that appeared at the turn of the 20th century, inspiring the pioneers of modernism and abstract art: Kandinsky, Mondrian, Malevich and af Klint. What was the zeitgeist that inspired such an eruption in abstract art? What were the conditions that created Hilma af Klint? Academics and experts Julia Voss, Tracey Bashkoff, Isaac Lubelsky, Linda Dalrymple Henderson and Marco Pasi each take a different approach. Voss analyzes af Klint's biography, pinpointing five important events in her life; Bashkoff presents her connection to Hilla Rebay and her plans for the building of a temple; Lubelsky traces the origins of theosophy in New York; Henderson examines the occult and science; and Pasi considers esotericism’s changing role in culture.

Hilma af Klint: Visionary

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

Bokförlaget Stolpe

Reintroducing a forgotten maverick of Swedish modernism 
Axel Törneman (1880–1925) was a key innovator of Swedish modernist painting, yet he has been largely written out of the history of early European modernism. This book collects his paintings and previously unpublished photographs and drawings.

Axel Törneman: The Forgotten Pioneer

Between 1906 and 1915, Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) created 193 paintings that she would title The Paintings for the Temple. Colourful, mostly abstract, with biomorphic imagery, these works expressed af Klint's mediumistic vision of spiritual reality, which she hoped would ultimately be installed in a round temple for true spiritual comprehension and enlightenment. Since the internationally acclaimed Guggenheim exhibition of 2018-19, these works have come to number among her most popular, defining and beloved. This handsomely produced clothbound volume collects these paintings in the second of a projected and collectible seven-volume catalogue raisonné that will present the entirety of af Klint's work in its dazzling totality for the first time. Produced in cooperation with the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, it features introductions by Daniel Birnbaum, former head of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, and architect of the grand af Klint exhibitions between 2013 and 2019, and Kurt Almqvist, President of the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.

Hilma af Klint: The Paintings for the Temple 1906–1915: Catalogue Raisonné Volume II

History & Criticism

City, Civility and Capitalism: A Historical Perspective

Architecture

Scholars from diverse disciplines tackle the many questions posed by the work and life of abstraction pioneer Hilma af Klint 
In this thorough critical appraisal, 20 specialists on modern art, art history, philosophy and religious studies examine the unique art, the cultural circumstances and art-historical positioning of Swedish abstractionist Hilma af Klint. Topics explored here range from early abstract art and the impact of Darwinism to Goethe’s color theory, as well as the importance of occult religious movements such as theosophy and anthroposophy that influenced the early modernists, and discussions of af Klint’s own personal diary notes and research.The book is based on the seminars that were held in conjunction with the exhibition Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction in 2013. This extremely successful exhibition attracted a record number of visitors to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, after which it continued to the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

Hilma af Klint: The Art of Seeing the Invisible

Hilma af Klint: Seeing is Believing

The result of a series of lectures delivered during the 2016 Serpentine Galleries exhibition Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen, this volume gathers essays examining the last abstract series made by Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). The paintings were all created in the first half of the year 1920 and are the last paintings af Klint made before turning to watercolour. Reproductions of these images are complemented by essays from Briony Fer, David Lomas, Branden W. Joseph, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum, which shed new light on af Klint and her importance for artists today, also addressing the need for a broader conception of art history that her work proposes. Beautifully designed this book is a key contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on this immensely popular painter.

Hilma af Klint: Seeing Is Believing

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a pioneer of art that made a turn away from visible to spiritual reality. Already in 1906, she had made abstract paintings. Hilma af Klint perceived a spiritual dimension and envisioned contexts beyond the perceptions of the ordinary senses. When painting, she alleged that she was in contact with beings of higher levels of consciousness that spoke and conveyed messages through her. Like her, later, modernist contemporaries she was influenced by the spiritual movements spiritualism, theosophy and later anthroposophy. Her mission was to understand and communicate the various dimensions of human existence. These blank paged notebooks, with covers featuring some of Hilma af Klint's most iconic artwork, come in two different colours.

Hilma af Klint Blue Notebook

Graphic Design

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a pioneer of art that made a turn away from visible to spiritual reality. Already in 1906, she had made abstract paintings. Hilma af Klint perceived a spiritual dimension and envisioned contexts beyond the perceptions of the ordinary senses. When painting, she alleged that she was in contact with beings of higher levels of consciousness that spoke and conveyed messages through her. Like her, later, modernist contemporaries she was influenced by the spiritual movements spiritualism, theosophy and later anthroposophy. Her mission was to understand and communicate the various dimensions of human existence. These blank paged notebooks, with covers featuring some of Hilma af Klint's most iconic art work, come in two different colours.

Hilma af Klint Orange Notebook

The drawings in this first volume of a new catalogue raisonné represent an intense ten-year period of Hilma af Klint's (1862-1944) life that would lay the foundation for her later achievements. In 1896, af Klint and four other women formed 'The Five', a group steeped in the spiritualist beliefs permeating Europe at that time, including theosophy, Rosicrucianism and other strains of liberal religious thought. From 1896 to 1907, The Five engaged in a daily systematic method of spiritual experimentation. During séances, Hilma af Klint drew automatic spiritual sketches based on the messages that the medium (not always the same member) communicated from the spirits the group summoned. The elaborate system of symbols, geometry and biological imagery that characterise her work all find their origin during this period.

Hilma af Klint: Spiritualistic Drawings 1896–1905: Catalogue Raisonné Volume I

Hilma af Klint rarely exhibited her work during her lifetime, and her magnum opus, The Paintings for the Temple, was shown to the public in the series of exhibitions that started in 2013 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and ended with the grand exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2018-19. This series of 193 paintings began with af Klint receiving communication from an otherworldly figure during a séance. Specific themes, such as evolution and duality, are conveyed through vivid pastel colour schemes and intricate geometric patterns arranged carefully on canvases that reach over ten feet in height. This volume, the third in the artist's first seven-part catalogue raisonné, contains the sketches and preparatory work af Klint made in anticipation of The Paintings for the Temple. af Klint traveled with these sketchbooks so as to be able to show her friends her work in a more accessible format.

Hilma af Klint: The Blue Books: Catalogue Raisonné Volume III

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