A Member’s Field Guide to Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers
Get a rare look at Hilma af Klint’s Nature Studies, a portfolio of jewel-toned watercolors made by a keen-eyed naturalist attuned to the rhythms and bounty of the blooming season. Delve into her groundbreaking work through words, images, and more.
In November 1906 Hilma af Klint wrote, “The experiments I have undertaken...will astound humanity.” Combining geometric and organic forms, af Klint invented a distinctive artistic language, now recognized as among that era’s earliest forays into abstraction.
In the spring of 1919 she embarked on a project to demonstrate the “connection between the plant world and the world of the soul,” drawing flowering plants on the island of Munsö, outside of Stockholm, creating a portfolio known as the Nature Studies. Breaking with traditional botanical art, af Klint paired each plant with a diagram, which visualized an aspect of human character or a spiritual quality she gleaned from close looking. Af Klint imagined the Nature Studies as the central element in a flora, or a botanical atlas, demonstrating her belief that careful observation of nature would reveal ineffable aspects of the human condition.
