MUSE
Hilma Af Klint
I visited the Tate recently to see the Hilma Af Klint and Piet Mondrian show, and was bowled over by Af Klints' use of colour and the sheer size of some of her canvases.
The use of burnt oranges through to dark blues, with soft pinks alongside her somewhat dreamy large abstract forms are inspiring and stay with you.
Her paintings are now recognised as the first abstract works known in Western Art History. Influenced by Spiritism, which was in vogue at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, her work was a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas inspired by Theosophy.
In the words of Af Klint “the pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely without changing a single brush stroke.”
-Heti Gervis
The Ten Largest, No 8, Adulthood, 1907
Hilma Af Klint’s colour palettes helped inspire our S/S23 Camille Sarong, seen here in Sunrise.
