Work
As said earlier, with the group de Fem af Klint engaged in spiritual practices and started working in a technique of automatic drawing. First instances of it took place as early as 1896.
During those séances, women recieved what they believed to be the messages from higher spirits, called The High Masters. Besides working on paintings, they also kept a book, where they codified the messages they were getting.
With the course of the time, Hilma af Klint developed a certain visual language, which combined zodiac symbols with certain geometric shapes, with which she was capable of reproducing in the form of paintings the messages those mystical forces were sending to her.
Af Klint's exercises in automatic drawing led to the High Masters assigning her to do create the series, which eventually was known as 'Paintings for the Temple'.
When Hilma af Klint had completed the works for the Temple, the spiritual guidance ended. However, she pursued abstract painting, now independently from any external influence. If the paintings for the Temple were mostly oil paintings, she now also used aquarelle. Her later paintings are significantly smaller in size. She painted among others a series depicting the stand-points of different religions at various stages in history, as well as representations of the duality between the physical being and its equivalence on an esoteric level. As Hilma af Klint pursued her artistic and esoteric research, it is possible to perceive a certain inspiration from the artistic theories developed by the Antroposophical Society from 1920 onward.
All through her life, Hilma af Klint would seek to understand the mysteries that she had come in contact with through her work. She left behind more than 150 notebooks with her thoughts and studies.
Hilma af Klint never dared to show her abstract work to her contemporaries. Her major work, the one dedicated to the Temple, had been questioned and rejected by Rudolf Steiner. Hilma af Klint drew the conclusion that her time was not yet ready to understand them. More than 1200 paintings and drawings were carefully stored away in her atelier, waiting for the future.
Hilma af Klint died in 1944, nearly 82 years old, in the aftermath of a traffic accident.
