Introduction

Narrator: Hilma af Klint was born in Stockholm in 1862. After studying at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts she established herself as a landscape and portrait painter.

Like many other artists across Europe, Hilma af Klint had a great interest in Spiritism and spirituality. Over the years she gained in-depth knowledge of theosophy, anthroposophy and Rosicrucianism and their common belief in a divinity beyond established religion. She took part in Spiritist séances with friends and in the 1880s they formed the group The Five.

In 1905 she was given a task by a spiritual being, one of the so-called High Masters. She was instructed to create paintings that “communicate images to humanity of the life that exists beyond everything”. The work, which has come to be called Paintings for the Temple, was initiated in 1906 and completed in 1915, comprising 193 paintings in a variety of media and sizes. A smaller group of paintings belonging to this suite, The Ten Largest from 1907, is presented in this exhibition.