Hilma af Klint

Once considered an outsider artist, after her show at the Guggenheim Museum was seen by more than half-a-million visitors, Hilma af Klint firmly established her place in art history. She has also been the subject of documentary films and biographies. In 2013, Iris Müller-Westermann organized the first institutional exhibition of af Klint's work. Now she presents us with the latest information and research in an extensive survey show at the Moderna Museet in Malmö.

Of crucial importance is the issue of spirituality in af Klint's painting—how she managed to translate both the material and the immaterial world into a pictorial vision. The accompanying exhibition catalogue is the first to investigate, from a variety of perspectives, the question of how this trailblazing abstract artist linked her painting to a higher consciousness. Essays by leading historians of theosophy and a quantum physicist, among others, provide enlightening insight into a world in which both the visualization of atoms and spiritual séances alike became artistic material—a world that fascinates us even more than ever.