Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future - Tapa dura

Af Klint did not ask for her work to be destroyed, only delayed. She did not wait for the world to discover her paintings. The world had to wait for them.--Prudence Peiffer "Garage "

Klint created her own optical language with visual, chromatic, structural, and narrative syntax. Her artistic ship sails some of the deepest waters around.--Jerry Saltz "Vulture "

The mother of all revisionist shows of Modernism.--New York Times

The canvases are massive and their idiosyncratic shapes, squiggles, and colors provide the viewer with an overwhelming sense of wonder.--Zachary Small "Hyperallergic "

Af Klint was not part of the larger abstract art movement so populated by men, but many of her paintings--vibrant, strange paintings inspired by her deep interest in Spiritism and Theosophy--predate those famous as pioneers of the style.--Monica Uszerowicz "Observer "

Without precedent in the history of art.--Cristiana Campanini "Abitare "

Gorgeous book.... The implications of these works are not only gargantuan, but also infinitely pleasurable to look at. And as written about in this wonderful volume, great to read about. By the time you put down this book, Hilma af Klint will be embedded in your visual library forever.--Jerry Saltz "Vulture "

Af Klint's ascendancy feels inevitable: She could be viewed as a heroine for our current moment, an artist who rejected commercial success, resisted the pull of self-publicity, and challanged the myth of individual authorship.--Julia Bryan-Wilson "Bookforum "

af Klint's contribution, arrayed here in all its abundant originality, threatens to reduce to a footnote the mostly male history of esoteric abstraction.--Artforum

'Paintings for the Future' endorses Klint's mystical conviction that the spiral symbolizes the dualities of the universe--good and evil, male and female, known and unknown--slowly reaching equilibrium.--Canada Choate "Artforum "

A groundbreaking study of visionary artist Hilma af Klint.

When Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died in 1944 at the age of 81, she left behind more than a thousand paintings and works on paper that she kept largely private during her lifetime. Believing the world was not yet ready for her art, she stipulated that it should remain unseen for another 20 years. But only in recent decades has the public had a chance to reckon with af Klint’s radically abstract painting practice – one which predates the work of Vasily Kandinsky and other artists widely considered trailblazers of modernist abstraction.

Accompanying the first major survey exhibition of the artist’s work in the United States, Hilma af Klint represents her groundbreaking painting series while expanding recent scholarship to present the fullest picture yet of the artist’s life and work. Essays explore the social, intellectual, and artistic milieu of af Klint’s 1906 break with figuration and her subsequent development, placing her in the context of Swedish modernism and folk art traditions, contemporary scientific discoveries, and spiritualist and occult movements. A roundtable discussion among contemporary artists, scholars, and curators considers af Klint’s sources and relevance to art in the 21st century. The volume also delves into her unrealized plans for a spiral-shaped temple in which to display her art – a wish that finds a fortuitous answer in the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda, the site of the forthcoming exhibition.