Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint painted as though she was channeling the universe. Fascinated from childhood by botany and mathematics, she began her career painting landscapes and portraits, but other preoccupations stirred within her: questions of spirit, unseen energies, patterns too vast for the eye alone.

Her art was inseparable from her spiritual practice. With a circle of female artists called The Five, she held seances, heard voices from "High Masters," and was inspired by the Theosophical Society and Rudolf Steiner's theories. Working tirelessly to map life's hidden dimensions, she would paint to the point of physical collapse.

By 1906, her canvases featured radiant geometries of spirals and orbs, impregnated with symbols, letters, and words, anticipating the later embrace of abstraction by Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, and others.