She Led a Double Life and Was Ahead of Her Time: Hilma af Klint in Paris
For most of her life, Hilma af Klint did not show her abstract works to the public. She was convinced that contemporary audiences were not yet ready to understand them. In her will, she even stipulated that the paintings should not be made available until twenty years after her death.
Author: MG
Lead image: Hilma af Klint. The Ten Largest, No. 3 (Youth). 1907. Tempera on paper mounted on canvas. 321 × 240 cm. HaK104. Courtesy of the Hilma af Klint Foundation / Photo: The Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
One of the most important exhibitions of the year may currently be taking place at the Grand Palais in Paris. For the first time in France, visitors can see Hilma af Klint’s monumental cycle The Paintings for the Temple. The Swedish artist was creating abstract compositions long before Kandinsky or Malevich. Yet for decades, she remained almost entirely unknown.
Organized jointly by the Grand Palais and the Centre Pompidou, the exhibition demonstrates that the origins of abstract art do not necessarily lead exclusively through the names familiar from art history textbooks.
Hilma af Klint led a double artistic life: an official one, associated with traditional figurative painting, and a hidden one, devoted to radically avant-garde work. She chose not to reveal her abstract paintings during her lifetime. In her will, she stated that her works should remain inaccessible for twenty years after her death. It was only in 1986, during the exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985 in Los Angeles, that her paintings were shown to a wider public for the first time. This marked the beginning of her international recognition.
Her work grew out of a fascination with spirituality, esotericism, and science. The artist was associated with the Theosophical movement and believed that art could become a language for describing the invisible forces that govern the world. Her paintings were not meant to depict reality itself, but rather what lies beyond it: energy, development, life cycles, and cosmic harmony.
The Paintings for the Temple (1906–1915) constitute her most important body of work and include the famous monumental series The Ten Largest, which testifies to the visionary power of an artist who was far ahead of her time.
The exhibition runs until 30 August 2026.
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