First exhibition in France devoted to the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), only recently recognized as a major figure of artistic modernity and of the beginnings of abstraction—on a par with her male counterparts Kandinsky, Kupka, Malevich, and Mondrian.
Alongside a conventional figurative practice, Hilma af Klint developed a body of work shaped by spiritualism and science, in which spirals, circles, and radiating forms convey the invisible forces governing the world and a search for cosmic harmony. Long kept secret, initially at the artist’s own request, this work was not presented to the public until 1986, in the group exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
This event not only highlights the many sources that informed her work—esotericism, folklore and popular art, and scientific culture—but also questions the way art history long overlooked women artists and their contribution to the founding movements of modern art.