HILMA AF KLINT & PIET MONDRIAN at the TATE MODERN on the 12th of June 2023

 HILMA AF KLINT & PIET MONDRIAN at the TATE MODERN on the 12th of June 2023

 

Piet Mondrian, Red Amaryllis with blue background, 1909-10, private collection

This exhibition attempts to compare the work of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944).  Mondrian is an established figure in the art world and his paintings also make big money at auctions but Hilma af Klint has appeared, almost fully formed even though many people won’t know her name.  It is undoubtedly true to say that her work was neglected and was wholly unknown outside a group of artists and friends for many years even though during her lifetime she was associated with famous contemporary figures like Rudolf Steiner.  Neither artist knew of each others existence.  Both artists journeyed from realism to abstraction, both were interested in Theosophy, a turn of the century movement in philosophy most obviously associated with the Russian mystic Madame Blavatsky.  Both were influenced by new movements in science and art.

Hilma af Klint, Botanical Drawing c.1890, Courtesy Hilma af Klint Foundation


The exhibition begins by establishing the realist credentials of both artists.  Hilma af Klint began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1882.  Women had only been admitted recently to the academy, in 1864, and women artists faced obstacles and possible exclusion.  She became an established painter of landscapes and portraits.   Mondrian studied at the Rijksakademie van Beelende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 1892-1897.  He was a realist painter associated with the ‘Hague School’, a kind of development from Impressionism. 

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Colour B, 1917, oil on canvas


Both artists were interested in evolution as an explanation for both human and artistic development.  In his work Evolution Mondrian uses colour to imply symbolic associations of evolution from a physical to a spiritual realm that was derived from the artists interest in Theosophy which insisted that all religions are one.  In 1908 Hilma af Klint was also representing evolution in terms of symbols.  One of these is the spiral of a snail’s shell.  Af Klint believed that snails were important creatures in the evolutionary process since they can be male, female, parthenogenetic or hermaphrodites.  The snail’s shell also implies the Fibonacci sequence which is often alluded to in Af Klint’s paintings whether consciously or unconsciously.  There seems to be some consideration of the unconscious in both artists since symbols and their associations are foregrounded. 

Hilma af Klint, The Evolution, The WUS Seven-Pointed Star Series


Hilma af Klint often painted on canvas with her typical range of pastel colours.  Given her use of esoteric figures, mysterious words, atypical symbols like the snail or the dog and images that resemble depictions of atoms and their components, it’s not difficult to see why her work was ignored.  In contrast, Mondrian’s work is less cluttered and more exact. His insistence on exactitude and primary colours, give his work a clean, clear, uncluttered aesthetic.  However, Af Klint’s visionary, dream-like painting is powerful and undeniably deserves our attention.  She was a painter who engaged with concepts and perhaps lost sight of any possible audience (perhaps this is always a possibility in any avant-garde project when the artist grasps new, vital potentialities in painting.)  Clearly it is time to re-examine the work of Af Klint in the light of recent feminist theory and the reclamation of diverse talents.  Af Klint's interest in Theosophy also led her to seek inspiration from seances.  Her involvement in a group called 'The Five' led her to try to contact 'High Masters' who inspired her with symbols and spiritual influence.

Hilma af Klint, Tree of Knowledge, The W Series, 1913

The exhibition offers details of the scientific developments gaining ground during these artists lifetimes, which were to provide the backdrop to their efforts.  For instance, the colour theory of J.W von Goethe where the colour spectrum is cast on a wall through a prism.  Goethe was challenging some of the assumptions inherent in the writings of Isaac Newton on colour theory, saying that Newtonian colour theory is only appropriate in certain circumstances.  Also the Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus, the first person to create a taxonomy, naming, defining and classifying species.  Both artists were drawn to nature and completed many drawings and paintings of flowers, clearly driven to define the exact nature of their observations.  One of the places Mondrian was drawn to was Domburg in the Dutch province of Zeeland which he visited from 1908 to 1914.  Mondrian's work on seascapes and dune scenes was the basis of the vertical and horizontal poles that dominated his later abstractions.  Yet another botanist who was beginning to influence artists with his incredibly detailed organic forms of shells and organisms was Ernst Haeckel.  Haeckel promoted Darwinism, which was a major influence on Mondrian and Af Klint, allowing them to depict a universe whose foundations were speculative, physical and against the prevailing orthodoxy of Creationism.  However, Haeckel also advocated social Darwinism and he was a eugenicist at a time when the theory was gaining advocacy in intellectual movements across Europe. 

The Gein Trees along the water, c.1905, Kunstmuseum den Haag

Although the exhibition seems to presume that Af Klint is a major artist it is also true to say that most viewers will struggle to realise one fact about her.  It is certainly a good idea to display her work alongside that of Mondrian.  This has the effect of supporting some of the claims being made about Af Klint with lots of supporting contextual evidence, even if it is of the circumstantial kind.  Af Klint's work is worth supporting but it seems to this reviewer that many visitors to this exhibition will struggle to place her work in a definite context and to provide a concrete evaluation of her creative efforts.  This will only appear when Af Klint is given her own solo exhibition and viewers offered the chance to judge her solely on her own merits rather than in comparison to a distinguished peer artist.

 Paul Murphy, Tate Modern, June 2023

https://www.thebelfastengine.co.uk/

Hilma Af Klint, The Ten Largest, Group IV, No.7, Adulthood, 1907



Hilma af Klint, The Swan, The SUW Series, Group IX, No. 17, 1914-1915

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