Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future

I only recently heard of the artist Hilma af Klint. Many of her paintings were done at the beginning of the 20th century but she felt then that the world was not ready for them. Instead she asked that they remained private until twenty years after her death. And it actually took even longer for her work to be seen. Hilma’s work is class. Like massive paintings of abstract and organic forms in bold and beautiful colour combinations. What’s most fascinating to me is the way in which she worked. She was perhaps as much a mystic as painter, as many of her paintings were derived from spiritual encounters through séances. Hilma af Klint acted as a type of medium to receive then materialise these messages. Messages that seem to be about the meaning of existence and she created a visual vocabulary around this. While this book is pretty dense and ‘academic’ in places, it’s a very interesting read so far and about a woman who most definitely needs to be written into art history.