07 October 2023 till 25 February 2024

Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian

Forms of Life


‘Those granted the gift of seeing more deeply can see beyond form, and concentrate on the wondrous aspect hiding behind every form, which is called life’ Hilma af Klint

        

The paintings of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint had their first European showing outside Sweden at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag In 1987 in the exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting, 1890-1985, initiated by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The fact that this exhibition presented Af Klint, then a completely unknown artist, as one of the five pioneers of abstract art – alongside Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian – raised quite a few questions. But times have changed. Af Klint’s colourful, visionary work is now embraced by both the art world and the public all around the world. In partnership with Tate Modern in London, the Kunstmuseum Den Haag is now presenting her groundbreaking work together with that of her pioneering contemporary, Piet Mondrian. Although the two painters never met, their idiosyncratic oeuvres reflect a period in which scientific discoveries and new ideas about spirituality radically altered our view of reality.

The Kunstmuseum Den Haag owns more than three hundred works by Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). Nowhere else in the world can his path to abstraction be followed so clearly. This year, we are interweaving his remarkable artistic odyssey with that of his contemporary, Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). The exhibition can be seen in London until 3 September and opens in The Hague on 7 October.

Beyond the Visible
Around 1900, a succession of discoveries, such as X-rays, the electron, radio waves and radioactivity, undermined much of what science had long believed to be true. It became clear that reality extends far beyond the visible and that what we can observe is only a fraction of it. Af Klint and Mondrian developed their powerful bodies of work against the backdrop of this changing worldview. They both began as landscape painters and almost simultaneously developed their own highly personal visual languages, moving away from natural forms.

Af Klint, who incorporated abstract elements into her work a little earlier than her contemporaries, developed a symbolically charged visual idiom that includes spirals and geometric forms in pastel colours. Whereas, in many of her series, Af Klint allowed her abstract works to flow from figurative ones, Mondrian arrived at abstraction more gradually. He ultimately developed a universal visual language based on horizontal and vertical lines and the primary colours. There are fascinating parallels between their oeuvres, however different their visual languages may be.

Nature
The exhibition and accompanying publication are based on new research. This scholarship investigates, for example, how the concept of evolution is central to the work of both Af Klint and Mondrian and how their unique formal languages were inspired by new ways of looking at nature. The two artists’ paintings and drawings of flowers, which are usually considered separately from their main bodies of work, are interesting in this respect. Mondrian mainly depicted cultivars such as chrysanthemums and amaryllises, betraying his interest in ‘modern nature’. By contrast, Af Klint focused on wild plants and flowers, and even made a survey drawing in which she combined them with diagrams that seem to systematise the natural world.

The exhibition also examines both artists’ interest in theosophy and anthroposophy and how these new movements attempted to unite the latest scientific discoveries with a spiritual life.

The Rhythm of Life
The exhibition explores Af Klint’s and Mondrian’s development through six themes: landscape painting, evolution, flowers, trees, the universal, and the relationship to space. This enables visitors to observe how Mondrian derived his forms from trees, piers and oceans, and to experience the rhythm and dynamism of his later grids. Visitors will feel the rhythm of life in Af Klint’s ‘evolutionary images’, series of paintings in which she allowed swans, for example, to morph from cubes to circular compositions.

The Ten Largest
In addition to being an artist, Af Klint was also a medium who claimed that many of her works were commissioned by higher powers. These include her most famous series, The Ten Largest (1907): ten monumental works of about 3.2 metres in height, which she painted in just forty days, that represent the stages of life from childhood to old age. Visitors to the Kunstmuseum will be able to immerse themselves in the remarkable atmosphere that is evoked by this impressive series full of lively signs, forms and colours. The Ten Largest were part of a collection of paintings that Af Klint made for a temple of her own design. In her will, Af Klint stipulated that these works could not be displayed in public for at least twenty years after her death. Like Mondrian, she was a true visionary. Both artists made art for the future.

After several exhibitions abroad, it is high time that the Kunstmuseum Den Haag showed her work again for the first time since 1986. Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life not only gives the Dutch public an opportunity to become acquainted with Af Klint’s work but also provides a fresh perspective on the work of Mondrian, who pursued a lifelong goal ‘to make the beauty of life visible, tangible and experienceable’.

Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life has been curated by Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern; Nabila Abdel Nabi, Curator of International Art at Tate Modern; Briony Fer, Professor of Art History at University College London; Laura Stamps, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Kunstmuseum Den Haag; and Amrita Dhallu, Assistant Curator of International Art at Tate Modern. The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue, published by Hannibal Books, with contributions from, among others, Wietse Coppes, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Janice McNab, Brandon Taylor, Caro Verbeek and Michael White. The English edition, Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life is published by Tate Publishing. Price 45 euros.

The exhibition has been made possible by Mondrian Fund, Fonds 21 and Turing Foundation, and has been realised in partnership with The Hilma af Klint Foundation and RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History. The exhibition has also been supported by the Dutch government: an indemnity grant has been provided by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands on behalf of the Minister of Education, Culture and Science.