Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers
Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers
Edited by Jodi Hauptman
Text by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Laura Neufeld, Lena Struwe
Museum of Modern Art, 2025
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DESCRIPTION
Af Klint’s exquisitely rendered botanical portfolio reveals a deep spiritual engagement with the flora of her native Sweden
Across the spring and summer seasons of 1919 and 1920, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint engaged in a period of intense observation of nature, venturing into forests and fields and drawing the flowers she found there. The resulting 46 sheets comprise her Nature Studies portfolio, recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In pencil and jewel-toned watercolor, af Klint juxtaposed exquisitely rendered blossoms with enigmatic diagrams: a blooming sunflower is echoed by nested circles; lily of the valley is joined by a colorful checkerboard; catsfoot is set against a pair of mirrored spirals. Together, these two modes—representational and abstract—demonstrate the artist’s belief that close observation of nature reveals "what stands behind the flowers": ineffable aspects of the human character.
Published in conjunction with the first public exhibition of this rare portfolio, Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers presents the drawings alongside contextualizing artworks and translations of the artist’s previously unpublished writings. An overview essay by curator Jodi Hauptman explores af Klint’s portfolio and the circumstances of its creation; texts by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Laura Neufeld and Lena Struwe unpack the imagery, materiality and botanical knowledge behind these works.
Hardcover, 9 x 10.5 in. / 272 pgs / 160 color.
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
New York, NY, Museum of Modern Art, 05/11/25–09/27/25
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) trained at Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and established herself as a professional artist. In the first decade of the 20th century, she developed a unique abstract vocabulary, some years earlier than her peers. Whether on canvas or on paper, her singular work is informed by her spiritual investigations and, as this project demonstrates, an interest in and attunement to the natural world.
REVIEWS
CORY REYNOLDS | ArtBook DAP Blog DATE 5/8/2025
The exquisitely rendered botanical watercolors of Hilma af Klint, published for the first time
Featured image is reproduced from new release Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers. Collecting a rare portfolio of exquisitely rendered botanical watercolors made during spring and summer of 1919 and 1920—just a few years after she completed her secret, groundbreaking Paintings for the Temple series that would, a century later, take the world by storm—this gorgeous, 272-page hardcover accompanies the first public exhibition of this body of work. “There are no obstacles to man’s ascent if he is capable of controlling his thinking,” Af Klint wrote in the essay, An Attempt to Explain What Stands Behind the Flowers, “directing his thoughts to the realm of light, overcoming the body’s resistance with his thought. When we turn our gaze toward the plant kingdom, it gives us information about the composition of our own being.”
LEFT: Sheet 9. Fragaria vesca (Woodland Strawberry), Oxalis acetosella (European Wood Sorrel), Antennaria dioica (Catsfoot), Taraxacum officinale (Common Dandelion). June 2–3, 1919, and May 24–25, 1920.
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