Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future

Product Information

In recent years, her colorful, spiritually-minded body of work has reshaped art historical timelines, supplanting male artists like Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, and Josef Albers, who have long been regarded as the pioneers of the 20th-century movement.

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG DANNY KOPEL | DATE 4/30/2020 See the new film on Hilma af Klint, playing in virtual cinemas via Kino Marquee When Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died in 1944 at the age of 81, she left behind a prolific body of work. Now, for the first time, af Klint’s works, some 1,600 in all, have been collected in a Catalogue Raisonné.Julia Voss has been instrumental in bringing her story to the forefront and tells her life with such sensitivity, generosity, and insight.

Though her paintings were not seen publicly until 1987, her work from the early 20th century predates the first purely abstract paintings by Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich. Her work remains conceptually open enough for viewers to draw their own conclusions, insert their own meaning and feel transported to other glorious worlds. At the turn of the twentieth century, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) created a body of work that left visible reality behind, exploring the radical possibilities of abstraction years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, or Piet Mondrian.Her biography of Hilma af Klint was on the shortlist of the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2020 and became a bestseller. Once considered an outsider artist, after her show at the Guggenheim Museum was seen by over half-a-million visitors, Hilma af Klint firmly established her place in art history. Julia Voss’s biography is the indispensable resource for anyone interested in pioneering artist Hilma af Klint. When Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died in 1944 at the age of 81, she left behind more than 1,000 paintings and works on paper that she had kept largely private during her lifetime. A wild ride [that] pulls readers into the story making them yearn to discover more about this spiritual, artistic young woman… A welcome and riveting tale of an often overlooked artist, interesting enough to engage any age, from elementary to high school.