Hilma af Klint - The Secret Paintings

'She wielded her paintbrush like a wand' (1)

I moved North just before Covid hit Aotearoa. For most of the last 2 years I have been in lockdown living alone, far away from my friends in Wellington. The lush green landscape has healed my sorrows. The isolation has forced me to really dig deep and I have discovered the rich, multi-layered textures grief can bring. This has been grist for my (art) mill, but ironically, the paintings made during this period are not sad. There's a freedom in solitude.

2021 was hard for everyone and I had been living alone in a town where I am a stranger. So in December when the national lockdowns eased I decided to drive to Wellington with my little dog, Frida Kahlo. We stopped along the way to visit friends in Raglan and Hawkes Bay. Long distance driving is my happy place - good music, great landscape, and the thrill of a road trip. My brain slips into a relaxed but focused awareness similar to meditation or that delicious, elusive state of flow I get when fully immersed in painting. Driving creates the conditions for creative ideas to flood my mind.

But I had another reason to travel from Northland to Wellington - and that was to see the Hilma af Klint exhibition.

I was unsure how I would react to a show that had attracted so much hype. I have enjoyed learning about Hilma af Klint since 2018 when I discovered she was a pioneer of abstraction and interested in unseen energies. As a fellow explorer of unseen energies I was intrigued by her inspiration from the occult and her symbolic mark making. As a woman, I was glad she was getting the recognition she deserved. So I was excited and had high hopes.

I was not disappointed. Not one bit.

After my first visit 3 pages of notes streamed onto the pages of the journal I had made especially for this visit.

Bespoke Journal I made

I found the exhibition uplifting. It made a spiritual and psychological impact on me. The pale colours gave it a lightness and ethereal quality. 'The Ten Largest' is a series that explores the human lifecycle. They were responses to a 'commission' af Klint received from the spirit world. Each one of these monumental works was painted in just 4 days. They could easily fit within the style of 'Hippie Modernism' from the 1960s - except they were actually created in 1907.

These secret paintings laid out a feast of minimalism, colour fields, geometric abstraction, biomorphic abstraction, symbolism, surrealism and even traces of abstract expressionism across the many rooms that displayed her work. This woman wove every type of genre together to convey her messages and make her mark - predating these later art movements.

I was struck by af Klint's handling of the substrate and paint. For the 'Ten Largest' tempera on paper was laminated onto canvas. Through the loose application of paint we could see the brush strokes which seemed hurried, confident and full of movement. Researchers have discovered a footprint in the paint, showing she had made these large works on the floor, just as Pollock did forty years later.

While precise and graphic - like illustrations, these works also convey a sense of energy and vitality, along with a loose ambiguity that is unconstrained. Words that came to mind were enigmatic and sublime. They are radical in their composition, colours and scale. These monumental works trace the lifecycle of humans from birth to death. We see graphic details and quirky lettering from a strange, other-world mingling with geometric shapes and floral motifs. The palette moves from primary blues, secondary oranges through to tertiary shades and tints of mauve and pink. Af Klint had devised her own system for the meaning of shapes and colours too - a code to help decipher their meanings. They are wonderful in every sense.

The Ten Largest, Hilma af Klint, 1907.

The Ten Largest, Hilma af Klint, 1907.

A second visit was called for. This time I spent more time looking at the preliminary paintings made for the 'commission' she received from her spirit guide Amaliel in 1906.

The limited colour palette and marks of these small oil paintings fascinated me. Each one was just 53 x 37 cm oil on canvas. In af Klint's world, blue signifies femininity, yellow masculinity, and green is a melding of both. This is part of her objective to rise above dualities, such as binary gender stereotypes. A contemporary artist couple who come to mind around this notion are Laurie Anderson and the late Lou Reed.

There are twenty-six in the group and they were painted between 1906-07 as preliminary works for the later works known as the 'Ten Largest' discussed above. Nineteen of these works were on display and the series is called 'The Wu/Rose Series, Group 1'. Each is named 'Primordial Chaos' and allocated a number. While some are diagrammatic or chart-like, others are organic and biomorphic. All marks are symbolic and it was handy to have af Klint's key provided by the City Gallery, to decode them once I had taken them in my own way.

Primordial Chaos, No 21

Primordial Chaos, No 14

Primordial Chaos, No 16

Primordial Chaos, No 10 (1906-07) was the one I kept returning to. It reminded me of Pitman's Shorthand outlines. I learnt Pitman's as an adolescent and I still use it today. The whole Pitman's system is based on a circle, and it is a code.

Primordial Chaos, No 10 (1906-07)

This show has had a profound impact on my psyche. It has inspired a breakthrough in my practice and prompted me to catalogue my own growing visual vocabulary of symbols, marks and colours.

References:

1. Jennifer Higgie, 'Becoming one again: The role of gender in the creation and reception of Hilma af Klint's art, Hilma af Klint The Secret Paintings, edited by Sue Cramer with Nicholas Chambers, published by Art Gallery of New South Wales and City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi 2021.