The future as seen from 1915

 

A few years ago, the swedish fashion house, Acne released a special collection of pieces featuring an artist. Lots of fashion brands do collaborations with artists, but something about this felt different. The artist in question, was Hilma af Klint. An artist who, apart from having a very cool name, was an early 20th Century abstract painter. Apparently Acne’s creative director Johny Johansson, saw her work at the Modern Museet in Stockholm, an exhibition that was the most extensive so far or her oeuvre and felt that were some sort of connectionbetween the art and his brand.

And so, an Acne Jumper became my introduction to this pioneering artist. Although I’d love to have seen that very same show as Johansson in Sweden, there is now a smaller exhibition now on show at the Serpentine gallery in London’s Hyde Park.

It is fantastic to see the work in the flesh - especially when you realise that it was all originally created in secret, It was stipulated in Hilma’s will that the works must not be made accessible to the public until at least twenty years after her death. Hilma felt that the work’s full meaning could not be understood until then. 

And when the work was released, it questioned everything the establishment knew about the original pioneers of abstract art, predating Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich. She was clearly a true visionary exploring spirituality, the occult and the higher consciousness of human existence. 

Hilma was part of a secret group of female artists known as ‘The Five’ who conducted seances in belief that spirits who wished to communiciate, would shown them pictures. This led to experiments with automatic writing and drawing, pre dating similar techniques used by the Surrealists by several decades. The output of work was prolific.

All of this happening, while she kept up the pretence of being a formally trained landscape painter.

Every generation throws up a handful of people that are clearly ahead of their time. Often these people are ostracized as madmen, rebels or delusional by the world that does not understand them. Others, perhaps like Hilma, work in secret and simply wait for the world to catch up with them.

 

Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen
3 March – 15 May 2016
Serpentine Gallery, London