Some experiences resist easy description. Standing in front of Hilma af Klint's paintings for the first time, in person, in the rotunda of the Guggenheim, was one of them. She was a long-underrecognized innovator of abstract art (1862–1944), and nothing I had read or seen on a screen prepared me for what it felt like to be in the room with her work.
Who Was Hilma af Klint?
Hilma af Klint was a Swedish painter who, by most accounts, created the first abstract paintings in Western art history, years before Kandinsky, Mondrian, or Malevich made their landmark moves into abstraction. She began her large-scale abstract series, The Paintings for the Temple, in 1906. Kandinsky's first abstract watercolor is dated 1910.
And yet for most of the 20th century, almost no one knew her name.
Af Klint stipulated that her abstract works not be shown publicly until at least 20 years after her death, believing the world wasn't ready to receive them. She died in 1944. Her work began to surface in the 1980s, but it wasn't until the Guggenheim's exhibition Paintings for the Future, running October 12, 2018 through April 23, 2019, that she reached a truly wide audience. The show became one of the most visited in the museum's history, drawing over 600,000 visitors. For many people, it was a revelation. For me, it was a confirmation of something I had long suspected: that the history of abstract art had a significant gap in it, and her name belonged at the beginning.
About the Exhibition: Paintings for the Future
Organized by the Guggenheim and spanning the museum's iconic rotunda, Paintings for the Future brought together over 170 works spanning af Klint's entire career. It was the largest retrospective of her work ever mounted in the United States. The scale of the installation, large canvases ascending the spiral ramp, felt entirely intentional. These were paintings made to be experienced at size, in space, over time. Seeing them given that room was something close to a gift.
Seeing Her Work in Person
Reproductions, however faithful, flatten what is essentially a living thing. There is a presence to af Klint's paintings that resists capture: a luminosity, a scale, a stillness that asks you to slow down and stay. I had studied her work on the page. Experiencing it in the full space of the Guggenheim's rotunda was something else entirely.
Her largest works, some over ten feet tall, are filled with spiraling forms, biomorphic shapes, botanical references, and symbolic systems she developed over years of private research. The palette moves between the delicate and the bold: soft pinks and blues alongside deep ochres and blacks. There is nothing tentative about them. These are paintings made with complete conviction.
The Guggenheim as a Work of Art
The Guggenheim is one of my favorite museums in the world, not just for what it holds, but for what it is. Frank Lloyd Wright's building is a work of art in its own right: that iconic spiral ramp ascending toward an oculus of natural light, the way the architecture itself seems to breathe. There is something almost ceremonial about the ascent, moving upward through the rotunda as the city falls away below.
For af Klint's work especially, that architecture felt like a gift. The building's own geometry, its curves, its light, its sense of upward movement, rhymed with everything she was reaching for. It was one of those rare moments where the container and the contents felt made for each other.
What Her Paintings Do
Her canvases don't announce themselves; they unfold. You find yourself drawn into layers of meaning that reward patience: botanical forms that suggest growth and cycle, geometric structures that feel both ancient and entirely modern, color relationships that carry emotional weight without ever becoming sentimental.
Af Klint drew on theosophy, anthroposophy, and spiritualist ideas circulating in European intellectual circles at the turn of the century. She worked with a group of women she called The Five, conducting séances and automatic drawing sessions she believed connected her to higher spiritual forces. Whether or not you share those beliefs, the paintings are undeniable. They have an internal logic, a coherence, that goes far beyond automatic mark-making. The spiritual framework was the context. The craft was the work.
What struck me most was how deeply rooted they are in the natural world, specifically in botany. Af Klint trained as a scientific illustrator early in her career, and that precision never left her. In her abstract work, you can feel it: the way forms unfurl like ferns, the way cells divide and spiral, the way growth itself seems to be the subject. That connection between the organic and the geometric is something I find myself drawn to in my own work, the sense that underneath every form, there is a natural logic at work.
What She Taught Me About My Own Practice
Art made from conviction rather than audience is something I return to in my own studio. Af Klint worked for decades without public recognition, without a market, without the validation most artists spend their careers chasing. She trusted the work, and she trusted it before there was any external reason to. That's a harder discipline than it sounds.
Her use of geometric form as a carrier of meaning, not decoration, not system, but genuine content, connects directly to how I think about structure in my own geometric abstract paintings. The shape is never just a shape. It's a field of tension, a container for something less containable. That idea is also bound up in how I think about constraint as a generative force in geometric abstraction. It's a quality I was reaching for in Ebb and Flow, a 36x48 coastal abstract that holds that same tension between movement and stillness.
She also clarified something about scale: her largest paintings aren't large for effect. They're large because the ideas inside them require that much room. I think about that often when working on bigger canvases. And she made work she believed the world wasn't ready for, and she was right. She didn't adjust to meet the moment. She let the moment catch up. I don't think I've fully learned that lesson, but I keep returning to it.
Her influence sits alongside others who have shaped how I see: the color theory of Josef Albers, the disciplined process of Richard Diebenkorn. Each of them made work from a place of deep internal necessity. That's the standard I hold myself to. For a closer look at how those influences took shape in the studio, read A Quiet Beginning in the Studio.
Why She Matters Now
Af Klint's rediscovery is more than an art historical correction, though it is that too. It's a reminder that the canon is always incomplete, that there are artists working in isolation whose vision exceeds what their moment can hold. She painted for the future, as the exhibition title put it, and the future eventually arrived.
For anyone interested in the roots of geometric abstraction, in the relationship between spirituality and form, or simply in what it looks like when an artist commits fully to an internal vision, her work is essential. If you haven't seen it in person, find a way. No reproduction will prepare you for it.
If you're curious about the thinking behind my own work, you can read my artist statement or explore the full collection of original paintings.
Explore Original Coastal Abstract Paintings
If af Klint's sense of movement, color, and quiet depth resonates with you, my coastal collection explores similar territory through an original geometric lens.
Shop Coastal Abstract Paintings
Artist Series
This post is part of an ongoing series on artists who have shaped my practice. Each post explores a different figure whose work, ideas, or creative philosophy has left a mark on how I think about painting. Recent posts in the series include:
- Bruno Lucchesi: a studio visit and the figurative tradition
- Josef Albers and the way color shapes perception
- Richard Diebenkorn: Notes to Myself and the creative process
Browse all posts in the Artist Series.
