Hilma af Klint mysticism that brought innovation in art which nobody was aware of at the time
Hilma af klint innovated without public taking unusual roads of spirituality
As the 19th century is sunsetting the obsession towards the invisible world is towering. We have various instances where under influence of various theosophies thinkers and artists are looking beyond but only few are truly courageous to actually pursue. Pursuing this world both externally as well as internally, because it is the world still chained by how something should be painted, so many rules, so many gates keepers, and still Hilma af Klint ignored all of them, furthermore she instructed that only 20 years after her death, her paintings are to be revealed. She knew that the world is not ready. The world is waiting for someone more convenient to step into the world of abstractions and announce the innovation. That is exactly what happened when Kandinsky and others courageously broke the limits, chains and normality at the end of the first decade of the 20th century.
Abstract world is being formed, exploring, tapping into the archetypes
Meanwhile Hilma af Klint is already developing her style, widely using the language of abstractions, primordial forms, archetypes,….. In her painting. Her paintings may not have had the level of convincing or confidence compared to the later abstractionists, however it does not make her any less an abstract painter. In fact she arrived to the destination before them internally through self discovery and even some kind of isolation which makes it remarkable and we need to rewrite some part of history due to this.
Last Journal entry: “You have mystery service ahead, and will soon enough realize what is expected of you.” Hilma af Klint
“The pictures were painted directly through me, without preliminary drawings and with great power. I had no idea what the pictures would depict and still I worked quickly and surely without changing a single brush-stroke.”
— Hilma af Klint
As it often or maybe even always happen it is the connection to the otherworldly that fuels the material. Hilma af Klint explains:
“The atom has at once limits and the capacity to develop. When the atom expands on the ether plane, the physical part of the earthly atom begins to glow” Still within the imaginary domain of Plato (This applies to all of us and lingers strongly even today), she is perceiving the otherworldly through the means of regular seances with a few other friends, participating in the join effort to communicate with the spirits, guides, masters, followed by meticulous note taking, self reflection, automatic writing and even painting. She claimed that he work is the result of the guidance from another realm, it’s subject are the universal topics, shape of the spiritual, hues of the primordial creation, directly connecting to the sources of the universe. She doesn’t believe in planning in many instances, she regards herself as a channel a mare tool through which the higher being (in symbiosis with her own) is expressing itself, tapping upon the universal truth. Her original youth infused fascination with the landscape is leading her to the road of observing the observer. Her use of symbols and primordial shape suggest a deeply philosophical way of seeing the reality, questioning this reality and pushing it into the symbolical, surrealistic, abstract inquiries, only established by the establishment in the later years.
Her vision is finally transcending the confine of the canvas and is thinking like a truly visionary artist wanting to present, merge her paintings with the space of spiral ascending stairs. Geometry is of highly spiritual nature in her pieces and she wants to reach beyond the canvas to scream the universal order of the universe that she is picking up from the beings in the other realm. Of course those beings could have easily been her subconscious mind that is roaming the infinite pool of imagination populated with all sorts of constructs. It is the element of reflection that is the most ubiquitously present throughout her opus and when we look at the reality of things, and from the perspective our 21st century empowered with the internet and all the religions, philosophies and mythologies of the world reachable at the movement of the fingertips, we realize the importance of the reflection. How universally everything resemble everything at some level and teaches us. She knew all of this somehow and presented it so long ago, even knowing that the world needs to mature to understand what she said through her paintings and her work is the tapping onto the universal, breaking away from many limitations and opening another way of looking at the art history.
