Artist Spotlight: Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint may be one of the most important artists modern art history almost erased. Long before Kandinsky, Mondrian, or the official arrival of abstraction, af Klint was painting massive works filled with spirals, symbols, radiant color, cosmic diagrams, and mysterious systems that blended science, spirituality, philosophy, and the unseen world. And then she did something almost unbelievable: she packed much of the work away, convinced the future would understand it better than her own time ever could.

In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, James William Moore explores the life, work, and rediscovery of the Swedish artist who forces us to rethink one of modern art’s favorite origin stories. From séances and automatic drawing to the age of X-rays, radio waves, and invisible scientific forces, af Klint’s work emerged from a world obsessed with what existed beyond ordinary sight. Her paintings challenge the idea that abstraction was simply a formal modernist experiment and instead suggest something stranger, bigger, and far more spiritual.

Why was her work hidden for decades? Why did the art world take so long to catch up? And what happens when history realizes one of its “official” timelines may have been wrong all along?

This is Hilma af Klint — and the modern art timeline is about to get messy.

J-Squared Atelier, LLC
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Transcript

HOST (James):

Picture it.

Stockholm.
 1907.

A woman stands in a studio painting giant spirals, glowing symbols, floating shapes, cosmic diagrams, strange flowers, and abstract forms that look like science, religion, biology, and outer space all crashed into each other during a séance.

And here’s the wild part:

She is doing this before Kandinsky.
 Before Mondrian.
 Before abstraction supposedly “arrives.”

But the art world barely notices her.

Because Hilma af Klint does something almost unbelievable.

She paints the future—
 and then hides it away for decades.

[pause]

And when the world finally opens the boxes…
 art history suddenly has a very awkward conversation to have.

This is Hilma af Klint.

And the modern art timeline is about to get messy.

HOST:

Welcome to Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, presented by J-Squared Atelier.

I’m James William Moore, your guide through the masterpieces, scandals, revolutions, and beautifully chaotic plot twists that make art history so fascinating.

And today, we’re talking about Hilma af Klint — the Swedish artist whose work forces us to rethink one of modern art’s favorite stories:

Who invented abstraction.

Because according to the traditional version of art history, a handful of famous men broke away from representation and bravely invented modern abstract painting.

And Hilma af Klint, from somewhere beyond the grave, basically responds:

“Oh. You’re just catching up?”

HOST:

Hilma af Klint was born in Sweden in 1862 and trained formally at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm.

She could paint landscapes.
 Portraits.
 Botanical studies.

She had serious technical skill.

But while she was studying traditional art, she was also deeply involved in spiritualism.

And before we laugh too hard at séances and spirit communication, remember: this was the age of X-rays, radio waves, electricity, and scientific discoveries revealing invisible forces everywhere.

People were suddenly realizing the world contained things you could not see with the naked eye.

So for af Klint, spirituality was not just mystical theater.

It was a way of asking:

What invisible systems shape existence?
 What lies beyond ordinary sight?
 Can art visualize forces we cannot physically see?

And honestly?

That is a gigantic modern question.

She eventually joined a group called The Five — five women who gathered for spiritual meetings, automatic drawing sessions, and experiments in communication with higher powers.

And whether you believe in any of that or not is almost beside the point.

Because these experiments pushed af Klint away from traditional representation and toward something radically new.

Not painting the visible world.

Painting the unseen one.

HOST:

Then, in 1906, Hilma af Klint begins the work that changes everything.

A massive series called The Paintings for the Temple.

And these works are bold.
 Huge.
 Confident.
 Completely abstract.

Spirals.
 Geometric forms.
 Symbols.
 Radiant color.
 Strange visual systems that feel part science diagram, part spiritual map, part cosmic blueprint.

And the date matters.

Because this is happening before abstraction is supposed to happen.

Not tiny experiments.
 Not tentative sketches.

Fully realized abstract paintings years before artists like Wassily Kandinsky became famous for supposedly inventing abstraction.

And this is where Hilma af Klint becomes a problem for traditional art history.

Because she does not fit the heroic modernist narrative.

She is not loudly publishing manifestos in Paris cafés.
 She is not building a public persona around artistic genius.
 She is not performing modernism for critics and collectors.

She is working privately.
 Systematically.
 Spiritually.

And history has a bad habit of overlooking revolutions that do not arrive loudly enough.

Especially when the revolutionary is a woman.

HOST:

What makes Hilma af Klint so fascinating is that her abstraction comes from a completely different place than the version we usually hear about.

Modern art history often frames abstraction as a formal experiment.

Artists reducing reality into shape, color, and line.
 Breaking painting apart piece by piece.

But af Klint’s work is not cold or detached.

It feels spiritual.

Her spirals suggest growth and evolution.
 Her circles feel cosmic.
 Her symbols hint at invisible balance between opposites: masculine and feminine, material and spiritual, earthly and divine.

She is not trying to escape meaning.

She is trying to visualize meaning that cannot easily be spoken.

And that changes the conversation completely.

Because suddenly abstraction is not just modern design.

It becomes philosophy.
 Mysticism.
 Psychology.
 Energy.
 Faith.
 Wonder.

Hilma af Klint was not painting emptiness.

She was painting systems larger than human vision.

HOST:

And then Hilma af Klint makes one of the strangest decisions in modern art history.

She decides much of the work should not be shown publicly until at least twenty years after her death.

Twenty years.

That is an artist looking directly at her own moment and saying:

“Nope. You people are not ready for this.”

And honestly?
 She was probably right.

Because these paintings did not fit comfortably anywhere.

Too spiritual for modernism.
 Too abstract for traditional painting.
 Too unconventional for the institutions of her time.

So af Klint carefully preserved the work instead.

Thousands of paintings.
 Drawings.
 Notebooks.
 Diagrams.

Not abandoned.
 Archived.

Like a message sent forward in time.

HOST:

Hilma af Klint dies in 1944.

And for decades, the work remains largely unseen.

Then slowly, the rediscovery begins.

Curators.
 Scholars.
 Artists.

People start realizing the scale of what had been hidden away.

And then comes the moment that changes everything:

The 2018 exhibition Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

And audiences lose their minds.

Because suddenly people are standing inside one of the most famous museums in the world looking at paintings that feel shockingly contemporary despite being more than a century old.

And with that comes a very uncomfortable realization for the art world:

What else has been left out of the story?

Who else got pushed aside because they did not fit the preferred narrative?

Because Hilma af Klint did not become important in the twenty-first century.

The work was already important.

The art world just finally caught up.

HOST:

Hilma af Klint reminds us that art history is not fixed.

It shifts.
 It expands.
 It gets corrected.

Her paintings challenge the idea that abstraction was invented by a neat little lineup of famous modernist men marching confidently into the future.

Because while the art world was busy building that story, Hilma af Klint was already somewhere else entirely — painting invisible worlds, spiritual systems, cosmic diagrams, and visions of a future nobody around her fully understood.

And maybe that is the most fascinating part of all.

She trusted the future more than her own present.

She believed someone, someday, would finally see what she saw.

And against all odds…

she was right.

[pause]

Because Hilma af Klint did not just paint abstraction.

She painted ahead of history itself.

And that…
 is the final stroke.

OUTRO

HOST:

Thank you for listening to Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, presented by J-Squared Atelier.

I’m James William Moore, and if today’s episode reminded you that art history still has hidden rooms, missing chapters, and ghosts waiting in the archive — good.

That means the mess is working.

Be sure to subscribe, follow, and share the show with someone who loves art, mystery, and a good timeline correction.

And while you’re there, check out our sister podcast, Lattes & Art, where we talk with artists, curators, and creatives about what it really means to make art now.

Until next time:

Keep looking closer.
Keep questioning the timeline.
And remember — art happens long before the world knows what to call it.