Beyond the body: Exploring Hilma af Klint

"I am not the body. I am not the mind,"

You chant slowly as you gently glide past each floor-to-ceiling length art piece from Hilma af Klint's, "Paintings of the Temple." Little goosebumps spread delicately across your shoulders and land on the center of your back, causing a slight gasp that parts your lips.

"There I am," you whisper.

Who is Hilma af Klint?

Hilma af Klint was born in Solna, Sweden in 1862.

Hilma's family moved to Hanmora, Lake Malaren where she grew fascinated with plants and botany (which heavily inspired her art.)
She became an artist in residence at The Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm after receiving a scholarship and honors.
While at the academy, Hilma primarily commissioned landscape art for clients, in order to make money---choosing to keep her more "provocative work" a secret.
Her hidden work, which we will explore in this post, was created using seances, automatic drawing, and occultist practices (which she picked up after her ten year old sister's death.)
- These spiritual gatherings with "de fem" led to Hilma creating over a thousand abstract pieces in secret, depicting spiritual union, reunion, and oneness with creation.
- These paintings went largely unseen for the duration of Hilma's life due to the earnest warnings from Rudof Steiner, and the general lack of tolerance for religions outside of Judeo-Christian faiths at the time.
- In her last will, Hilma instructed her nephew to release her paintings to the public twenty years after her death, in the hope that future generations could bear witness to her "life's work".

My favorite Hilma Af Klint Pieces:

"No.7 Adulthood"

In this piece from Hilma's most famous collection, Paintings for the Temple", we see what looks like a cell going through mitosis. The splitting of a daughter cell from a genetically identical parent cell, and becoming its own entity, directly mirrors adulthood.

Not only is the physical separation indicative of adulthood, but the freely optimistic and rosy outlook also shows itself in the bright colors and jubilant swirls surrounding the golden yellow cell in this painting. The feeling of excitement, vigor, love and budding passion all represents the hallmarks of youth.

This painting struck me first with the color, then with the title, and finally with the feeling of what it means to be young, free, and naïve.

"What a human being is."

Here we have the piece that inspired me to make this website. "What a human being is" looks like the physical manifestation of love, its unifying principles, and its ability to create on a quantum level. This energetic spiral merging two sides and a spectrum of colors melting into a pool of light at the bottom of the heart represents the creation of our souls.

The very fiber of our beings are bound together by these energetic bonds that we can't see with our naked eye, but can feel with our minds, bodies, and spirits. Hilma captures love through this electrifying painting and illustrates a feeling beyond traditional landscape art.

This piece made me cry when I first saw it, because it felt like I had witnessed my primordial soul and its creation.

Untitled 1913-1915

In this stunning piece, we see a man tenderly caressing a woman from behind, while her heart is pierced by a flaming cross. This painting illustrates total intimacy; the material world in this piece has faded into complete darkness, and all that remains are these two people.

The raw intensity of this painting may be a bit much for most, considering her typical motifs are light in color and nature; but there is something so incredibly dense and raw about this untitled piece. It feels like I'm witnessing a cosmic event occurring between two people in communion with each other and with creation as a whole.

"And the two will become one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."-Mark 10:8-12

Tree of Knowledge series No. 1

This painting of "The Tree of Knowledge No. 1" by Hilma Af Klint, was heavily inspired by the biblical story, of the "Tree of knowledge" from Genesis. In the story, God forbids Adam and Eve from eating fruit (knowledge of universal secrets), but they both disobey, which results in humanity being separated from God.

The fresh, light, and buoyant atmosphere of the painting is complimented by its primarily pastel color palette. The multicolored infinity symbols are chromosomes forming from the intermingling of black and white swans (representing men and women), which branch out and form the leaves of the tree.

Yellow and blue lines representing male and female swirl together, and connect at the base of the tree---forming four multicolored petals that surround a tightly wound red heart.

This whimsical interpretation looks like an opening scene from a studio Ghibli film, or the dreams of a child; which is why I felt kinship with this piece. The color choice, creativity, and possibly true interpretation of the Tree of Knowledge pulled on me, and became the color inspiration for my website.