After hearing your name, I make my pilgrimage. The old power station still generates a sacred energy. A basilica of the arts. Rich yokes combined with pigment, guided from another sphere. Landscapes nourish the trees, Alpha and the Omega. Abstracted language seeks out religion, exploring nature to her atomic level. Hidden for years your masterwork, ten windows to another world. We sit at the altar, waiting patiently for a channel to the other side.
Forms of Life at the Tate Modern in London, is a unique exhibition combining two forces of modern art. Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian. Mondrian, gained recognition and success within his lifetime and is acknowledged as one of the pioneers of 20th century abstract art. But could art history be rewritten to recognise Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, whose lesser-known mystical paintings are considered by many to be the first abstract works in western history? Although neither artist met their shared ideas run throughout their work and this exhibition. They both started their artistic careers as landscape painters, they shared a passion for botany and the natural world. They both shared interests of scientific discovery, spirituality, and philosophy, and both were members of the Theosophical Society. An esoteric new religious movement founded in 1875, influenced by Buddhism, Hinduism, Neoplatonism, and the occult. ‘There is no religion higher than the truth.’
The exhibition begins with the earliest works, landscapes. Af Klint’s beautifully rendered paintings have depth, texture, and mesmerising skies. A very proficient and traditional landscape. But I am taken aback by Mondrian. Although a little more expressionistic, large brush strokes, and scrapping back through the impasto, I wonder how did the artist that created these works go on to master the very flat and precise geometry of his famous grid?
The next room leads you to Hilma af Klint’s ‘The Evolution’ series. 16 panels a little over 1m by 1.3m. Black, white and soft pinks lead into blues, reds, and bold oranges as the paintings progress. There is a language here, every painting is loaded with birth, life, and death. Religious symbolism, sacred geometry, reproduction, good, evil, rebirth and connection. Some of the work looks like slides under a microscope, life at an atomic level.
Another ‘Evolution’ is hung on the opposite wall. A triptych panel of a goddess, that sits somewhere between the transition of art nouveau to art deco. An artist shifting toward a more graphic style, distinct line, and bold colour. ‘Lighthouse at Westkapelle’ (1910) sits next to ‘Evolution’. Amongst this loose, pastel toned lighthouse I can see the beginning of a grid. The monument is defined by line and flat strokes of colour. Piet Mondrian is evolving too.
Lighthouse at Westkapelle.
The exhibition continues to works on paper and sketchbook pages. Both Mondrian and af Klint were obsessive about botany. Af Klint’s sketchbooks almost feel like field guides and Mondrian created still lives, detailed chrysanthemums and lilies resting in vases and bottles.
Grids are forming now as we move around the room. From 1914 Mondrian’s work dissolved into abstraction. Vertical lines representing male, spiritual energy and horizontal lines, a female material vitality. ‘A universal harmony based on the balance of oppositional forces.’
In the same year, Hilma af Klint shifted between her nature based figurative imagery to complete abstraction. Her series ‘The Swan’ starts with the two fowl, one white and one black reflected horizontally across the canvas. There is a pull here, a struggle almost like the ying-yang representing opposite but interconnected forces. This is the year the world became consumed by the First World War and this feels evident in the work. Birds merge into spirals and geometric forms vibrate in the room. Light and dark, male and female, life and death.
In the 1920s Piet Mondrian developed his theory of Neo Plasticism, and created his renowned visual language of the grid. Reducing painting to its basic principle, neo plasticism consisted of horizonal and vertical lines with flat and bold primary colours, grey, black, and white. Mondrian’s goal was to ‘express the universal’ to show us the beauty of life in its purest form. This is the work that would make him one of the greatest modern artists in history.
For Hilma af Klint her life’s work would remain unseen until 20 years after her death in 1944. Although she attempted to exhibit her paintings, she was led to believe that her work would not be excepted or understood by her contemporaries. This critique of her work caused Hilma af Klint to doubt herself and stop painting. She did not pick up a brush for 4 years.
Af Klint was killed in a traffic accident at the age of 81 in Sweden. She left more than 1200 paintings and 125 sketchbooks and diaries to her nephew. Amongst her colossal oeuvre was ‘The Ten Largest,’ one of af Klints most ambitious works. This series was created in just 40 days, each painting a giant at 321 x 240cm, representing childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age. This series was part of a collection ‘Paintings for the Temple’ that af Klint was making, taking cues from the spirit realm to ‘give the world a glimpse of the stages of life.’
These paintings are really what I came to this exhibition for and they do not disappoint. I am dwarfed by them, consumed by them. Each holds a force, a power that needs to be decoded. Cells divide, dissected flora, atoms collide, swirls of colour lead me to the interconnectedness of life. Everything in motion and flow until nothing. Then the cycle starts again. Forms of Life is an exhibition that does feel in parts like a spiritual experience. It shows the immense power of art, a shared consciousness that is beyond the written word. Two artist’s conveying similar ideas and principles in very distinctive ways. I am saddened though that the genius of Hilma af Klint was not recognised within her lifetime. An all to familiar story for women artists across history. Whether purposely left out from the canon or reduced to crafters and hobbyists, there is still a long way to go, but I hope exhibitions like this at the Tate Modern will start to address that balance.
Forms of Life is on now at the Tate Modern London, until 3rd September 2023.