Hilma Af Klint: The Pioneering Abstract Painter

An exhibit of her paintings at the Guggenheim in 2019 drew the museum's highest attendance ever. Another show closes this month at the Grand Palais in Paris. Some of her pieces have been shown at the Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art. Why did it take more than a half century after her death and 150 years after her birth for the art world to appreciate the genius of Hilma Af Klint?

Join us Sunday, Aug. 30, 12:30 pm for Back Lane Studios' next Extraordinary Woman event at the Revue Cinema. We will be screening the 2019 documentary Beyond the Visible -- Hilma Af Klint, followed by a Q&A with Alison Syme, U of T associate professor of Modern Art, and PhD student Bronwen Cox, who is focusing on women artists and the occult.

Tickets are a suggested donation of $16 on Eventbrite or at the Revue Cinema Door.

Watch the trailer here.

Hilma Af Klint was born in 1862 into a noble Swedish family. Early on, she showed interest and aptitude for mathematics, botany and art, and she distinguished herself at the Royal Academy of Fine Art. She was adept at portraiture, landscapes and botanicals, subjects favoured by 19th century society and acceptable for women artists. She earned income from her work.

But then a spiritual quest led her to esoteric societies, the Theosophists and Anthroposophists, and to seances, where she communicated with and received guidance from the spirit world.

That changed everything.

The result was an extraordinary body of work, some painted as she channelled the creative energy of her spirit-world guide. The abstract paintings are colourful and energetic, some huge, often with references to religious symbols and nature. These vivid images predate by some years those of Wassily Kandinsky who claimed the crown for the first abstract artist.

Why have so many of us never heard of her? One reason: She decreed that her art and notebooks be kept hidden away for 20 years after her death, which occurred in 1944. She did not believe the world was ready to accept her work.

But in the last decade or so Af Klint's art has finally captured public attention. Her images and the story of her life have inspired films, a graphic biographical novel, books, a couple of operas and some blockbuster exhibits, the most recent at the Grand Palais in Paris.

There is much to explore through the documentary and the Q&A after the screening:

• Who was this woman who spent much of her life, isolated on a Swedish island, relentlessly driven to represent visually the world we can't see, the world of spirit, atomic particles and radiation?
• Why was her unconventional work dismissed by the powers that be, even in more recent decades? Was it because the artist was female? Was she disqualified by her foray into the world of the occult? (Meanwhile, male artists of the period -- like Kandinsky or Piet Mondrian -- were also intrigued by the occult and the ideas of the Theosophists.) Is her work simply too decorative?
• Who were the Theosophists and Anthroposophists, why were they so influential in the late 19th and early 20th century, and why did so many women artists at that time turn to their esoteric philosophies and to the occult?
• How have issues of gender and the very nature of the art world hindered our understanding and appreciation of art?

Today, controversy continues to swirl around Af Klint and her work. How were her enormous "Temple" paintings inspired and executed? Did she have help? Who will determine the future of her paintings? One contingent argues they should be reserved for sacred purposes, as she originally intended, while another advocates for their release, in effect to the marketplace, for public exhibition.

We are thrilled to have two art history specialists with expertise in late 19th and early 20th century art to discuss these issues after the film.

Alison Syme is Associate Professor of Modern Art at the University of Toronto and Vice-Dean, Faculty at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her work focuses on late 19th and early 20th century art in Britain and Europe and treats a range of topics from society portraiture and animal painting to early abstraction. She is the author of A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-Siècle Art (2010) and Willow (2014) and is currently completing a three-volume collection of primary sources on the Victorian artist.

Bronwen Cox is a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on late 19th and early 20th century mediumistic women artists, examining the intersections between occult modernism, authorship and gender roles. Her research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and a Jackman Junior Fellowship.

Tickets are by a suggested donation of $16 on Eventbrite or at the Revue Cinema door. Please note that when buying tickets by donation, you can only purchase one at a time.

The Extraordinary Women series serves as a fund-raiser for arts not-for-profit Back Lane Studios.