THE GREAT COMMISSION

In 1904 Hilma was informed, through Ananda, that she was to execute paintings on the astral plane. This involved paintings that represented the imperishable. In the summer 1905 she was promised that she would be prepared to mediate a message. The names Amaliel, Ester and Georg were mentioned. It was said that she was to work in service of the mysteries carrying out the new building also called the Temple. First she had to go through a cleansing process. Amaliel said: You shall be struck blind. You shall deny yourself so that your pride shall be broken. You shall stumble in order to be tested for your own weakness. A crying voice shall you become, but before that you shall be broken down into dust.

After this radical pronouncement Hilma went through a severe inner crisis. It was clear that something quite special was expected of her. To her direct question as to whether the work was to be through painting, she received an affirmative answer. She was considered suited to the task since in her development she was similar to the vestal virgins of old. In the notebooks we read: Sent by higher spirits am I, Amaliel, to lead you, especially Hilma, through Gidro. Hilma commented: Amaliel offered me a commission and I immediately replied: yes. This became the great commission that I carried out in my life.

She had to promise to devote a year’s work to Amaliel to carry out his wishes; she also had to promise to refrain from her ordinary painting. The paintings she was to do were called drawings for the Temple. In the notebooks we read that Amaliel said: You shall proclaim a new way of life, and yourself become a subject of the new kingdom: Your exertions will bear fruit.

From then on Hilma changed radically, both in her art and her personality. She herself described this change in 1917 as follows:

“To be able to carry out a task which carries great responsibility I have been forced to refrain from what was my heart’s desire in the days of my youth: being able to reproduce from external form and colour. In other words I have in fact been driven back from a field work, laboriously climbed the ladder ...”

She had turned inwards instead of concerning herself with external reality. This step in the life of her soul and its formation required a completely different approach, though precision continued to be a guiding star to her. This internal experience is quite different from depiction of the experiences of the external senses. A new concept of the universe was taking shape within her. Biographically she was no longer young, but was on the threshold of the critical step into middle age. She was 45 years old. An other change was that she acquired the ability to cure with her hands.

PRELIMINARY EXERCISES

To be able to work in the new way she had to practise. The previous spiritualist drawings, which had developed out of the automatic writing, were not enough. Instead she now did exercises in two sections in which she tried in a painterly way to create forms automatically, as an instrument. First she did 26 small oil paintings, a work she began in November 1906. Green, yellow and blue are the dominant colours in the series that according to instructions from her guides she gave the designation WU. In contrast to her earlier portrait and landscape painting, these works are clearly surface-oriented and their themes represent an evolutionary creation in which primitive forces are expressed. Letters also appear beside dark symbols.

Another series of paintings, somewhat larger than the earlier ones, followed. These were done between January and September 1907. They also belong to the WU series and the dominant colour is rose, against which rhythmic spiral lines in other colours are set. According to he colour symbolism this rose pigment may express an element of Eros.

For both series of paintings in the WUworks there are pencil drawn patterns in a notebook. There are more sketches than actual paintings and it is impossible to say why certain sketches were executed in oils and others only as sketches.

The two WU series are followed by three large paintings, which she called preliminary works. These are distinguishable from their predecessors by their being clearly representational. They were given the titles: The Nun, Evening tranquillity and Sunrise.

  PAINTINGS FOR THE TEMPLE – A YEAR FOR AMALIEL

  THE FIRST SECTION

In may 1907 work begun on what Hilma called the ten great figure paintings. They were preceded by preparation in the form of fasting and prayer. The artist described how they came about as follows: Within me I read off their size (158 x 114 cm). Over the easel I saw a Sign of Jupiter, which was strongly illuminated and visible for several seconds. Immediately after that the work began. It happened so that the pictures were painted directly through me, without preliminary drawings and with great power. I had no idea what the pictures would depict and still I worked quickly and surely without changing a single brush-stroke. Each one took six days and I was told not allow the pictures to be seen by other people. When I was not using it for the pictures, L. R-t and Alma Arnell, who were both of the opinion that the work was inappropriate, used the studio where I worked, Hamngatan 5. After 24 successful day’s work the four pictures were complete. I worked about four hours every day.

When this task was completed she was told: You have seven months left to produce mediumistically what we for the time being want brought down to humanity of light.

The ten pictures were completed on Christmas Eve 1907. Ester and Theosophus helped her, she says. Theosophus guided her hand. Behind them stood Amaliel.

It is difficult to say whether these beings that guided her hand and led her work were historical figures or whether they were the kind that arise only from imaginative reality. The paintings are no longer made up of patterns or arabesques but are figural and have distinct contours. They thus show a figure or figures that can be seen as guides or gurus, as well as male and female figures in a dependency relationship with the guides. The paintings are all more or less symmetrically constructed. When Erik af Klint asked his aunt who had given her the task, she always answered that they came from Tibet. The work was a message.

A pause in the work on the large figure paintings in October and November 1907 gave rise to the Ten Greats (328 x 240 cm). They represent an artistic zenith in her medial creation and the form gives insight into four different ages of man: childhood, youth, manhood and old age. The paintings, like the exercises in the WU series, are constructed with a uniform background colour against which is set an arabesque-like theme, either with or without textual elements. They frequently contain a strong aesthetically developed tension between colour and form.

The words, which can be directly interpreted in the mediumistically produced paintings often, occur in pairs, for example, vestal - ascetic and rose - lily. Hook - eye, rose - lily and paired shells (each turned in its own direction) recur as motifs.

These five series or groups of pictures represent the prelude to Hilma´s long work both mediumistic and more independent.

THE SECOND SECTION

Early in the spring of 1908 three picture suites were executed. She called them the secondsection. They are the purely arabesque-like WUS series that she also gave the name sic transitgloria mundi or the Seven Stars. It is divided into three sections, each consisting of seven watercolours. On top of this she also painted a further WUS series in which the word Evolution occurs. This consists of 16 oil paintings with rigorously symmetric compositions containing figures. Parallel to this came the third suite of pictures comprising 17 watercolours. Double diagonals characterize this and according to the notes the first half are designated USwork and the second WUSwork. The whole of the second section was brought to completion on April 24, 1908.

Over a period of one and a half years, from November 1906 to April 1908, Hilma gave herself over to the great commission. During this intensive period she managed to complete 111 pictures for her exalted commission masters. She thus had to put everything else aside and subordinate herself to the commission in all areas of her life. Throughout the work her women friends played a very important role. The tasks related to the paintings were also to be shared between them. But the others turned out to be afraid to make themselves available in so special a way. Therefore Hilma undertook the commission in their place.

On one occasion Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, visited the studio. This was apparently during his visit to Stockholm in 1908. He seems to have seen the part of the work that had been completed by that time and to have expressed views on the paintings. There are only relatively vague and diffuse notes from his visit, and the exact time has not been fully ascertained. Hilma asked him if he would be her guru in parallel with the spirits figures and he promised to do so if the others agreed. He pointed out that their contemporaries were not capable of understanding the paintings, but that this would be more possible in fifty-years´ time. Rudolf Steiner’s vague comments were presumably a disappointment to Hilma who had undoubtedly expected very clear, profound interpretations.

  A BREAK FROM PAINTING

After April 1908 the work on medially produced paintings was interrupted. It was not until April 1912 that Hilma took up her painting work again. During this period she did a few traditional portrait paintings. The best known is a portrait of professor Knut Ångström at the Norrlands Nation at Uppsala University. It was done from a photograph and was completed in 1910.

The artist and her friends did not stop noting down medial messages and their interest in the occult trends of the time led to their attending lectures by Annie Besant and Rudolf Steiner. Hilma became deeply involved in the work of both of them, and saw in Steiner a master whom she wanted to follow alongside her spiritualist guides. She gradually came strongly under the influence of anthroposophical thinking. This was presumably because Steiner stressed the Christian message so clearly. Theosophy regards Christianity as one important teaching among many others. This difference certainly did not make the choice difficult for her, as her notebooks continually revolved around central Christian ideas. Until 1913 both Annie Besant and Rudolf Steiner were spokesmen for the Theosophical Society. Therefore she presumably experienced no serious conflicts between the two before the time Steiner broke away and founded the Anthroposophical Society.

  THE LATER SECTION OF PAINTINGS FOR THE TEMPLE

After a four-year break and all that it entailed in inner struggle and development, a completely new period in Hilma´s life began. She became once again the bearer of mediumistic messages, but they were shown to her in the form of verbal report or as direct internal images. No one guided her hand, as before. In the spring of 1912 she continued her work and followed through the task in hand until the final painting Human Chastity in December 1915. Now it was she herself who worked actively. Her friends contributed by making notes on what she either experienced or reported. It took longer to carry out the works since she herself had to solve the artistic problems.

It was during the second period of her pictorial creation that she produced the most interesting and the most accomplished work from the point of view of both form and colour in the Swan series or SUW series. They represent both fairly realistically depicted swans in various relationships between white and black individuals. There are also intricate constructions of cubs in the form of intersections which in an unusual way reveal transparency in the cube and which use interesting combinations of colours to mediate a significant power of love. In the SUW and UW series the theme of love is taken to the point of cosmic forms in which evil is defeated with the help of the powerful but bloodless intercession of an archangel.

The two series SUW and UW draw to a close with the last three great Altar pictures which achieve a high degree of abstraction and which move into geometric configuration. All this ended with the painting Human Chastity that according to an interpretation shall be a synthesis of the whole work.

Around 1912 Hilma and some of her women friends rented the villa Furuheim at Sjöängen on the island Munsö in the Lake Mälar. During the summer she lived here together with her friends.

The number of paintings was growing continually, and when the large work was completed a special place had to be prepared for it. With support of friends the decision was reached to build a studio close to Furuheim. During the years 1916 - 1917 they were able to realize their plans. In the studio all paintings were hung.

The studio was built to house the paintings considered Pictures for the Temple. They had been finished in 1916 and we can regard the whole building project as a sign that the commissioned work had been carried to completion.

Once the painting tasks and the building were complete, Hilma continued her activities as a free artist. But she did not return to where she had left off in her painting in 1905. The receptiveness to visions she had developed during the years she carried out her spiritualist commission was still alive and came to characterize her painting in the future. The format was more modest, and in addition to oils she went over more and more to watercolours and pencil.

   THE MOVE TO HELSINGBORG – TRIPS TO DORNACH

As early as 1913 Hilma ha come in contact with the nurse Thomasine Andersson who helped her look after her mother during the winter 1918 – 1919. After the death of her mother in 1920, Hilma and Thomasine Andersson moved in together, settling in Helsingborg. They lived there in the winter and spent their summers in Munsö. In time the two became inseparable and were more deeply united by their mutual interest in anthroposophy.

During the ´20s and ´30s the two friends made several trips to the anthroposophical centre, the Goetheanum, in the town of Dornach outside Basel in Schwitzerland. With Rudolf Steiner in Dornach Hilma encountered a completely new way of looking at art that deposed everything she had so far achieved. Steiner missed both direct imitation of nature and the attempt to depict the purely transcendent in paintings. It was Steiner’s observation that between these two extremes there lies an of the creativity; Hilma tried step by step to develop her capacity in that area. To begin with Hilma was dumbstruck by all the new things she encountered with Steiner in Dornach. It was only after a couple of years that she got under way seriously with new painting inspired by Steiner’s example.

Apart from this she was brimming with enthusiasm to have Steiner comment on and preferably explain the earlier paintings that she executed at the behest of spiritual beings. She asked questions on a number of occasions but received no satisfactory reply. Then, when Steiner passed away in1925, she became quite despondent as she had certainly believed that he would in one way or another be able to pronounce on the quality and value of the work. She now instead, tried to continue independently on the path inspired by Steiner.

To begin with she refrained completely from painting. Then she tried to penetrate her experience of nature in the more fluid medium of watercolours. Plants and elementary beings became her theme for several years. Later she went over to more introverted studies of experiences she had had on a spiritual plane. Here she penetrated what she had experienced in her meditations of the life between death and rebirth and of experiences of previous incarnations. Over the years she developed into a multifaceted mystic who could make long trips in an invisible sphere of experience. Occasionally she broke with this theme to do portraits of adults and children in the immediate vicinity.

She thus succeeded in switching between deep internal experiences and occasional open-mind work giving form to the everyday world. It is very important in understanding her nature to observe how accessible she was to such different levels of experience. She had the ability to give form to both the transcendent and the sensory.

THE PERSON HILMA AF KLINT

On first sight we might perhaps assume that hers was a completely detached and almost unhealthily fanciful nature. But her very ability to alternate between internal experience and depiction of eternal reality urges against her being seen as such a fanciful character. If we then see statements by people who got to know her, the picture assumes many nuances. Erik af Klint described his aunt thus:

Hilma was a slender little woman with a high bearing and lively movements. She had fine-boned features, light-blue eyes with clear intense gaze and a contemptuous mouth. She was open and alert and interested in what was going on. Independent, dignified and strong-willed, she walked her carted path through life with an assured gait. There was nothing sentimental, dreamy or soggy about her nature. On the contrary, she was solid and well balanced. Her way of life was ascetic and she was a vegetarian. She made very great demands on herself, conscious of the fact that she bore within her powerful spiritual forces, which shaped her life and suited her to higher tasks. She herself said of this, “I am so small, a am so insignificant, but within me gushes a kind of force that has to go forward.” What was most characteristic of her was the purity and moral sublimity that she radiated. She said, “Life is an illusion if a person does not serve the truth.”

Despite this emphasis on reality she was gifted as a medium, and from her childhood had contact with spiritual forces. She had already had visions in her early years. She related how one morning as a small girl she saw two coffins in her room. Over one was one year, over the other, another. In both these years she became very ill and nearly died.

The librarian Olof Sundström, who got to know Hilma during her final years, has left behind some sketchy notes, which give some idea of how he saw her as a person:

A mathematician, levelheaded and clear-thinker. Unsentimental, pure, her personality was permeated by a spiritual attitude which was the result of an introverted, detailed scientific elucidation of all the soul’s faults, shortcomings and qualities, and an uncompromisingly strict, straight-backed bearing and execution in questions of moral qualities. Dry humour and a humanly simple way of life, modesty, courage – yes she was a rare personality, who through her externally humble demeanour radiated a sublimity and a power very seldom encountered.

This woman, who spent her entire life working on her highly individual paintings, left over at thousand occult paintings and a great many notebooks on her death on October 21, 1944.

IN A SHORT HISTORY OF ART PERSPECTIVE

At the exhibition THE SPIRITUAL IN ART – ABSTRACT PAINTING 1890-1985 at Los Angeles County Museum of Art the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint's works were shown for the first time to a bigger audience. The breakthrough was bewildering. An unknown Swedish artist was presented side by side with Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Frantisek Kupka and other pioneers in the domain of abstract painting.

Here were the clean colour fields and a strict abstraction that led one’s thoughts to American abstract expressionism from the 1960s. But her paintings were made much earlier already in the beginning of the 20^th century Hilma af Klint started paintings these astounding pictures inspired by spiritism but at the same time having quite an other character than for instance Ernst Josephsson, who also looked for mysticism.

Here is in stead an artist who is looking for new ways of creation and who in an enigmatic and individual way attach herself to a parallel track to early modernism.

In total she painted more than one thousand pictures, many of them in series. Under rigid concentration and without influences from her contemporaries she worked with big purposefulness under many decades with these paintings.

She herself did not see the paintings primarily as abstract pictures, non imaginative, but as a message from a spiritual world: “Seven months you still have to mediumistically produce what we want to deliver down to humanity of light.”

                                                             CHRONOLOGY

(Figures in brackets refer to known numbers of executed paintings)

1862          Hilma af Klint is born at Karlberg on October 26.

1872          Family moves to Norrtullsgatan in Stockholm. Hilma is put into Normalskola för flickor (Normal school for girls) in Riddargatan. Summers are spent at family farm Hanmora on Adelsö, in the Lake Mälar

First section WU

Second section WUS

US, W

SUW

W, UW