Video: How a medium artist invented abstract art and predicted World War II: Hilma af Klint
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Abstract painting appeared more than a hundred years ago, but still causes a storm of discussions today. For a long time, art critics wondered who became its discoverer - Pete Mondrian or Wassily Kandinsky. Now this dispute has been resolved, although the name of the creator of abstract art is not so widely known. Hilma af Klint has given humanity a new way to talk about their feelings. And she was told about it … by ghosts.
Hilma af Klint was born in 1862, near Stockholm, to a Protestant family. Her father was a cartographer, and they lived at Karlberg Castle, where the naval academy was located. Hilma's father was a very versatile person and managed to instill in his daughter a love of both science and art. Together they indulged in music and read aloud to each other the works of Charles Darwin. At the age of ten, Hilma began taking painting lessons, and around the same time she met Anna Kassel. The fragile red-haired Anna became Hilma's close companion for many years. The girls' favorite game was to summon spirits - children love to tickle their nerves. Of course, no perfume appeared to him. At least then. At the age of eighteen, Hilma experienced a severe shock - her younger sister died of the flu. The girl did not come to terms with this loss, but life went on as usual.
Hilma af Klint became one of the best students of the Royal Academy of Arts (her beloved friend Anna Kassel also studied there). She received a large scholarship to open her own workshop, earned good money - painted portraits and harsh, energetic landscapes. Financial independence allowed her not to worry about marriage - and, in general, Hilma's men were of little interest.
She was well versed in the exact and natural sciences, was interested in evolutionary theories and adored mathematics, was interested in modern trends in art - she especially liked the expressionism of Edvard Munch, participated in the debates and battles of young artists. Everyone who knew her admired her intelligence and broad knowledge in various fields. She always dressed in black and followed a vegetarian diet. Hilma was a commercially successful academic artist with a scholarly mind. And it is all the more surprising that af Klint became … a medium.
All with the same ruthless Protestant rationalism, she bit into the works of Helena Blavatsky and Christian Rosenkreutz. For that time, it was not eccentricity - the more famous pioneers of abstract art, Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky, were fond of theosophy and wrote a lot about the spiritual component of art. However, Hilma went further. She didn't just study stories about spirits and the hidden, immaterial side of being. She made contact.
There were five people in Hilma's spiritualist circle - she, Anna Kassel and three other artists. They were all associated with the Theosophical Society of Sweden. The girls read the New Testament, meditated, arranged purification rituals and seances. Perhaps Hilma sought to find one among the otherworldly voices,so familiar and dear - but unknown creatures with strange names "came" to her and whispered their stories. In 1906, the first series of abstract works by Hilma af Klint appeared … the first in the world. Long before the surrealists advocating automatic writing, af Klint began to use this method. She argued that she did not think over the composition and symbolism of the works - external forces were driving her hand. When she showed her works to a member of the Theosophical Society, Rudolf Steiner, he thoughtfully said: "You will not be understood even in half a century."
This statement unsettled Hilma. At the same time, she had to part with Anna - her younger sister died, and grief provoked a severe exacerbation of asthma. Anna had to leave for treatment. Hilma's mother, long-widowed, lost her sight, and Hilma moved in with her. She gave up her passion for spiritualism and painting. It seemed that everything was over, but … In the house of her mother, Hilma met Thomasin Anderson, a nurse. The women immediately felt attracted to each other. Inspired by a new love, Hilma renewed contacts with Steiner (he created the Anthroposophical Society in Sweden) and returned to painting. In addition, she became interested in botany. Wassily Kandinsky was also at one of the exhibitions where she presented her landscapes - however, it is not known whether they managed to communicate. Anna Kassel, despite Hilma's betrayal, helped her buy a studio, where the artist moved her numerous works and moved herself with her mother and Thomasin.
In her mature years, Hilma was no longer guided by the instructions of the spirits, concentrating on her own experiences. Her works reflect the balance of male and female, evolution, the connection between man and nature, the beauty of the world and the horror of war, the connection of everything material and spiritual in the world. But the mysticism did not disappear from the life of Hilma en Cleef. In 1932, she painted a series of watercolors-maps with very militaristic titles - "Blitz over London", "Fights in the Mediterranean" … Seven years before the start of World War II, the artist was able to predict many of her events in her paintings.
The artist lived for eighty-two years, having outlived for several years both her friends, whose love fueled her creative genius until the last days. Her key masterpiece is a large-scale series called "Temple", which includes about two hundred canvases. The content of the works defies interpretation. Together with Anna Kassel, she painted ten huge paintings dedicated to the stages of human life - "Ten Biggest". In general, her abstractionist heritage includes one thousand two hundred paintings and drawings. During the artist's lifetime, they were not exhibited, moreover, she bequeathed not to show them to the public for twenty years after her death. For several more decades her nephew, Eric af Klint, received rejections from art museums …
Only in the 1980s was the phenomenon of the “mother of abstraction” Hilma af Klint rediscovered, and in the late 2010s her creations were seen by the general public.
Recommended:
8 Legendary Women of the First World War: Feats of War and Post-War Fate
The First World War fell on a pivotal time in itself: women began to drive cars, conquer the sky on still imperfect planes, got involved in political struggle, and conquered science long ago. It is not surprising that many women showed themselves very actively during the war, and some even became legends
Migration of peoples in the USSR: Why, where and who was deported before World War II, and then during the war
There are pages in history that are rethought and perceived differently in different periods. The history of the deportation of peoples also evokes contradictory feelings and emotions. The Soviet government was often forced to make decisions at a time when the enemy was already trampling on their native land. Many of these decisions are controversial. However, without trying to denigrate the Soviet regime, we will try to figure out what the party leaders were guided by when they made such fateful decisions. And how they solved the issue of deportation to Ev
How the great-grandson of a witch became a science fiction writer and in the middle of the 20th century predicted TV plasma, ATMs and more: Ray Bradbury
In the Soviet Union, the writer Ray Bradbury was recognized back in 1964 - as the author of science fiction works. And his "Dandelion Wine" is now recognized as one of those books, without which it is impossible to imagine the literary development of a teenager. Reading books - both strangers and your own - shaped the writer himself, who became one of the most famous authors of the 20th century
Why the first abstractionist considered herself the chosen one and forbade her to show her paintings: Hilma af Klint
While many of Hilma af Klint's famous contemporaries published manifestos on abstract art and exhibited extensively, af Klint kept her groundbreaking paintings under wraps. She rarely exhibited them, convinced that the world was not yet ready to understand her work. And she even set a condition that her paintings should not be shown for 20 years after her death. Only by the beginning of the 21st century, af Klint's mystical works began to attract serious attention
As a half-blind, one-armed hero of the First World War, he became a world famous artist: avant-garde artist Vladislav Strzheminsky
He was born on Belarusian soil, called himself Russian, and entered the history of art as a Pole. Half blind, one-armed and without a leg, he became a famous avant-garde painter of the first half of the last century. The obsessed dreamer of the world revolution, he was also ruined by it, lived an incredible life, full of heroism and suffering. Today in our publication is the life story of an extraordinary person who went through the meat grinder of the First World War, endured incredible physical pain, lived and worked in