Despite her enormous popularity, until now there has been no biography of the enigmatic Swedish painter, Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), whom Louisiana exhibited in 2014. Inspired by his first encounter with the artist's work in 2008, the German historian and art critic set , Julia Voss, (b. 1974) decided to learn Swedish and research Klint's life – not only who the artist was, but what drove and inspired her. The result is a biography of an artist as great as she is enigmatic.
Like many of the artists at the turn of the twentieth century who developed some version of abstract painting, Hilma af Klint studied theosophy, which holds that science, art, and religion are all reflections of an underlying life form that can be harnessed through meditation, investigations and experiments.
Long before Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction, Klint worked in a non-representational mode and produced a powerful visual language that continues to speak to audiences today.
The story of the artist is fascinating and unknown to most. It's a story about a female artist on the edge of the established canon. She belongs to the first generation of academy-educated women in Europe. She was educated in Stockholm in naturalistic portrait and landscape painting. Hilma af Klint's visual universe is visually strong, color-experimental and rich in symbols.
Dimensions: H: 22.9 x W: 15.2 x D: 3.4 cm
Pages: 448
Language: English
Author: Julia Voss
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press