Can Abstraction have a feminine voice? Rediscovering the vision of swedish Painter Hilma af Klint

Art is often presented as a sequence of works and artists that history has gradually identified as the most crucial, essential and of the utmost importance. Whether consulting ancient sources or modern encyclopaedias, from Giorgio Vasari’s Lives to Wikipedia articles, the narration of artistic creativity is commonly structured through a canon of artists and works that has taken shape over time: the mind then moves from the prehistoric paintings at Lascaux to the Venus de Milo, from the Mona Lisa to Hokusai and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, tracing a pantheon that seems to bear the appearance of authority, permanence and inevitability.

But can this picture be considered complete? In parallel, art academies have established standards, museums have reinforced narratives, and educational
institutions have reinforced hierarchies: this so-called ‘artistic canon’, therefore, is not a neutral container, but rather a narrative which, reflecting our human subjectivity, is intrinsically shaped by our historical, cultural and social context, both collectively and individually... As we wander through the halls of the Louvre or the galleries of the Tokyo National Museum, how many of the works on display fail to capture our attention, often polarized by the creations of Leonardo da Vinci and Hiroshige? And how many masterpieces, beyond the galleries, have been erased from public memory and still lie confined to museum storerooms, dispersed into private collections, neglected as tastes changed, or destroyed altogether - not because they lacked artistic merit, but because the societies that encountered them (including ours!) were not, or are not yet, prepared to recognize, value, and preserve them?

Several artistic periods, for example, were predominantly shaped by male practitioners, partly because systems of artistic education excluded women from artistic training and professional practice. A notable example is provided by Abstract art, an expressive form that rejects the representation of external reality, assigning painting instead the role of expressing the artist’s inner experience through shapes, lines, and colours detached from the visible world, and whose origins have traditionally been attributed to Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian. But what changes when the history of art is examined not only through the artists who became part of the established canon, but also through those who remained outside it?

It is in this way that figures once confined to the margins of art history and regrettably forgotten are today being re-evaluated and increasingly recognised as pioneers of the highest significance: among them is Hilma af Klint. As early as 1906 – a year when Kandinsky was still very much a naturalist – af Klint was in fact already producing paintings that place her among the earliest pioneers of abstract art. Through vivid fields of colour, suspended between the visible and the invisible, geometric structure and organic form, she sought to give visual expression to spiritual forces: invisible energies, hidden correspondences, cycles of life, and, more broadly, the spiritual dimension that she believed permeated both nature and the human mind. As she wrote: “Behind everything, there is a life, a divine life that has taken shape within that thing. The artist’s privilege is to see that life”.

From 6 May to 30 August 2026, the Grand Palais in Paris will indeed host a major exhibition dedicated to Hilma af Klint, curated by Pascal Rousseau, organised in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou and entitled “Hilma af Klint. Les peintures du Temple (1906–1915)”.

Figure 1 Exhibition poster for Hilma af Klint © GrandPalaisRmn – Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2025

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors encounter Hilma af Klint's formative artistic years. Born in 1862, she studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, one of the few institutions at the time to provide women with a complete academic training in the visual arts. In 1879, following the death of her sister, af Klint developed a fervent interest in spiritualism, seeking to establish contact with the deceased. These gatherings, held with four close companions who formed the group known as De Fem ("The Five"), became a decisive moment in the evolution of her artistic practice: within this circle, drawing and painting emerged as means of giving visual form to experiences that were understood as originating beyond conscious intention.

Figure 2 Hilma af Klint, vers 1901 By courtesy of the Hilma af Klint Foundation - photo Moderna Museet, Stockholm,
Sweden

The culmination of this research was the monumental cycle The Paintings for the Temple, integrally presented in the exhibition.

The first part of the exhibition is devoted to the early creative phase of this cycle. Among the works presented, the series Eros explores the dual nature of love, at once earthly and heavenly, masculine and feminine, brought to life through and symbolic alphabets (u, representing woman and spirit, and w, representing man and matter) and floral arabesques flourishing across the surface with rosy petals, evoking the triumph of purity and the harmonious symphony of the sphere...

Figure 3 Eros, No. 1, 1907, oil on canvas, 58 × 78 cm, HAK027. Courtesy of the Hilma af Klint Foundation / Photo: The
Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

In the series Chaos, af Klint explored the primordial tension between the inert opacity of matter and the celestial radiance of the spirit: from an original unity, imagined as a state of harmony now lost, the composition of these artworks gradually blossoms through the emergence of shapeless traces, then followed by geometric forms – most notably spirals, a symbol of the spiritual evolution of terrestrial life. The result is a veritable cosmogony: an evocation of the origins of the world and of all its creatures...

Figure 5 Primordial Chaos, No. 12, 1906–1907, oil on canvas, 53 × 37 cm, HAK012. Courtesy of the Hilma af Klint
Foundation / Photo: The Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Figure 6 Primordial Chaos, No. 16, 1906–1907, oil on canvas, 53 × 37 cm, HAK016. Courtesy of the Hilma af Klint
Foundation / Photo: The Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

In Evolution, af Klint aimed to illustrate the progression of physical bodies towards increasingly immaterial geometric forms, presenting a vast meditation on the transformation of the human condition. Whereas Chaos was concerned with the emergence of life from the primordial magma of form, Evolution turns towards the spiritual destiny of humanity, in a metaphysical journey in which the human soul, having been separated from its original state of unity through the fall into the shadows of earthly existence, progressively moves towards the ethereal light of his spiritual emancipation. It is necessary to descend first into darkness in order to ascent towards light...

Figure 7 Evolution, No. 1, 1908, oil on canvas, 102.5 × 134.5 cm, HAK069. Courtesy of the Hilma af Klint Foundation /
Photo: The Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Following in the exhibition is the series The Ten Largest, comprising in ten works of “paradisiacal beauty” in the artist’s own words, executed in egg tempera, the same technique used in Renaissance for sacred painting. Conceived as a supersensible interpretation of the four stages of human existence - childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age - the works do not follow a linear progression from the first footsteps of man to his declining twilight, but instead evoke a hypnotic journey, through organic and symbolic forms, and mesmerising, iridescent colours shining with profound layers of meaning: red embodies desire, yellow represents power, wisdom, and intellectual concentration, while blue resonates with spiritual contemplation and faithfulness...

Figure 8 The Ten Largest, No. 1 (Childhood), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 322 × 239 cm, HAK102.

Figure 9 The Ten Largest, No. 2 (Childhood), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 315 × 234 cm, HAK103.

Figure 10 The Ten Largest, No. 3 (Youth), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 321 × 240 cm, HAK104.

Figure 11 The Ten Largest, No. 4 (Youth), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 315 × 234 cm, HAK105.
Courtesy of the Hilma af Klint Foundation / Photo: The Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Figure 12 The Ten Largest, No. 5 (Adulthood), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 321 × 237 cm, HAK106.

Figure 13 The Ten Largest, No. 6 (Adulthood), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 315 × 234 cm, HAK107.

Figure 14 The Ten Largest, No. 7 (Adulthood), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 315 × 235 cm, HAK108

Figure 15 The Ten Largest, No. 8 (Adulthood), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 322 × 239 cm, HAK109.

Figure 16 The Ten Largest, No. 9 (Old Age), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 320 × 238 cm, HAK110.
Courtesy of the Hilma af Klint Foundation / Photo: The Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Figure 17 The Ten Largest, No. 10 (Old Age), 1907, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 320 × 237 cm, HAK111.

The exhibition finally concludes with The Altar Paintings, the final series of Hilma af Klint’s cycle. Comprising four monumental works, the series brings together geometric abstraction and symbolic imagery to express the culmination of the same spiritual journey the visitors of the exhibition embarked through pictorial contemplation. Through balanced compositions and a refined visual language, af Klint presented an ideal state of harmony and cosmic unity, envisioned as the ultimate stage in the evolution of human consciousness...

Figure 18 Altarpiece, No. 1, 1915, oil and gold leaf on canvas, 237.5 × 179.5 cm, HAK187.

Figure 19 Cover of the Hilma af Klint exhibition catalogue © GrandPalaisRmn Éditions – Centre Pompidou, 2026.

In conclusion, the exhibition reveals the extraordinary presence of an artist who remained outside the dominant narratives of modern art for much of the twentieth century, only to be rediscovered and recognised today as a visionary pioneer. Hilma af Klint’s work blossoms through a unique visual language where luminous colours, organic forms, geometric structures, and symbolic compositions invite the viewer into a world where abstraction becomes a vessel for spiritual inquiry, and where every shape and colour seems to carry the trace of a deeper, hidden order.