Hilma af Klint

When Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (b. 1862; d. 1944) began creating radically abstract paintings in 1906, they were like little that had been seen before: bold, colorful, and untethered from any recognizable references to the physical world. It was years before others would take similar strides to rid their own artwork of representational content. Yet, af Klint kept her groundbreaking paintings largely private. She rarely exhibited them and, convinced the world was not yet ready to understand her work, stipulated that it not be shown for twenty years following her death.

Ultimately, her work was all but unseen until 1986, and only over the subsequent three decades have her paintings and works on paper begun to receive serious attention. This survey of Hilma af Klint’s will offer an unprecedented opportunity to experience her long-underrecognized artistic achievements, especially her breakthrough years, 1906–20, when she first began to produce nonobjective and stunningly imaginative paintings, creating a singular body of work that invites a reevaluation of modernism and its development