Long before her paintings were hung in museums, Hilma af Klint was quietly documenting messages from the spirit world.
At the turn of the 20th century, spiritual séances were gaining popularity across Europe. Scientific discovery was advancing, but much of human experience still fell outside its reach. The séances became a space to explore what didn’t fit neatly into logic. For many artists, especially women, it offered a way to trust intuition. To listen instead of explain.
Af Klint had formal training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. But the work she’s now known for didn’t come from academic study. It came from a small spiritual group she formed with four other women, who called themselves De Fem, Swedish for “The Five”. They held regular séances, entered trance states, and kept detailed records of the messages they received from beings they called spirit guides. Some had names, like Amaliel or Ananda.
One message told her to begin a series of works she called The Paintings for the Temple. Nearly 200 paintings, many of them large and filled with symbolic forms, geometric language, and layered color relationships. She said the work was guided. That she wasn’t making it on her own.
I don’t find that hard to believe. When I was working on my Midnight Series, I’d often begin with a small still life or flip through second hand ikebana books for inspiration. The charcoal allowed me to flow with the medium. Images would slowly unfold into a kind of landscape. I was intentional, but also guided. I’ve never used a Ouija board, but maybe it’s not so different. There’s a kind of trust that develops when you let the work be shaped by something you can’t fully name. The unknown isn’t just tolerated, it’s part of the process.
Af Klint’s work came years before Kandinsky, Mondrian, or Malevich. But unlike them, she wasn’t trying to break away from realism to find a new language. She believed she was receiving one. Her paintings weren’t formal experiments. They were visual transmissions about spiritual ideas: vibration, polarity, the evolution of the soul.
She rarely shared the work. She thought the world wasn’t ready for it. When she died in 1944, she left behind over 1,200 paintings and 26,000 pages of notes. She asked that they not be made public until at least 20 years after her death.
It took longer than that, but eventually, the work was seen. Her 2018 retrospective at the Guggenheim became the most-visited show in the museum’s history.
What stays with me isn’t just the images, but the way they were made. Quietly, privately, with trust in something that didn’t need to be proven. That feels familiar. Not everything I make comes from a clear idea. Sometimes it feels like I’m just making space for something I don’t fully understand yet.
Hilma af Klint wasn’t painting for her time. Maybe she wasn’t painting for ours either. But we’re able to see the work now. And that feels like a kind of opening.
Paintings for the Temple
Hilma af Klint, Group X, Altarpieces, No. 1, 1915
Hilma af Klint, Group X, Altarpieces, No. 2, 1915
Hilma af Klint, Group X, Altarpieces, No. 3, 1915
A collective automatic drawing by The Five, Hilma af Klint's spiritualist group. CreditThe Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
A detail of “Group VI, Evolution, No. 15,” from af Klint's 1908 series titled “The WUS/Seven-Pointed Star Series,” shows the artist's mixture of writing and symbols.
The Ten Largest Collection
Painted rapidly under spirit guidance, the series visualizes the human life cycle as a vast, symbolic progression. Their title comes from the towering size of these paintings.
No. 1, Childhood, 1907
No 2, Childhood, 1907
No. 3, Youth, 1907
No. 4, Youth, 1907
No. 6, Adulthood, 1907
No. 7, Adulthood, 1907
No. 9, Old Age, 1907
No. 10, Old Age, 1907
Image credits to Frieze magazine