The third collection of Tria Chromatica, named ‘Limah’, is based on the works of the mystic Hilma af Klint. The Swedish artist is credited with creating some of the earliest known abstract paintings in Western culture. Her work precedes both Kandinsky and Mondrian’s first totally abstract compositions. She brought the “invisible” to the surface. Using the medium of painting, she conveyed intellectual and spiritual topics in a tangible way. Philosophical thoughts and artistic creations are like two vessels for communication in Hilma af Klint’s works of art. As a true pioneer of the modern art world, Hilma af Klint acts as an ideal inspiration for the third and final generative art collection of the Tria Chromatica series.
We chose four pieces from af Klint’s ‘The Ten Largest’ and one from af Klint’s ‘The Swan series’. Adulthood No.6, Childhood No. 2, Youth No. 3, The Swan No. 17 and Adulthood No. 7. They are significantly different from the Matisse and Kandinsky works we had previously created. Sharp lines, triangles, and squares were employed for Stimaes and Swayils. The af Klint shapes are softer and more feminine, which contrasts nicely with the other two collections. Swirling patterns in soft pastel colors mingle rhythmically with cursive letters in her series ‘The Ten Largest,’ forming a kind of visual poetry.
Petals, ovaries, flowers, and spirals pulsate with creation sparks. Hilma af Klint attributed this series to the exploration of the human life cycle, from childhood and youth to adulthood and old age, and we thought it was a match made in heaven because we are envisioning the possibilities of invincibility of the life of their art combined with possibilities of advanced technology.
Background
Two aspects of the biography of af Klint would give her an advantage in becoming an artist. When the admiral's daughter was born in 1862, she was born in Sweden, which was one of the first countries to allow women to study art. This allowed her to attend Stockholm's Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1882. Within five years of graduating, she moved into an artists' quarter studio and began to gain notoriety as a landscape and portrait painter. She also had a passion for the study of plants and animals, and in 1900/1901 worked as a draughtswoman for the veterinary institute.
Secondly, Klint was born into a protestant family and came into early contact with theosophy. It doesn’t take a friend of the esoteric to see the advantages that theosophy could offer a young artist. In the nineteenth century, no one doubted that great works depended on equally great inspiration. Hardly anyone, however, believed that when women painted, the higher powers came into play.Despite this, few people believed that when women painted, the higher powers were unleashed on the world. When Helena Petrovna Blavatsky founded Theosophy, she saw things in a new light. Women were encouraged to join the organization and held positions of leadership. In other words, it was the first European religious organization to be gender neutral. Klint attended her first spiritualist event at the age of seventeen,
An interest in the invisible dimensions that exist beyond the visible world occupied af Klint, like many of her contemporaries. When she was painting, she felt as if she was communicating with a higher realm of consciousness. "The Paintings for the Temple" was the centerpiece of her artistic investigation. As an artist who has claimed to communicate with spirits and pioneered abstract art, Hilma af Klint has been the subject of much intrigue in recent years.
The Five
Starting in 1896, af Klint and four of her female artist friends formed a cadre known as the Friday Group, which was dedicated to the study of Judeo-Christian scripture, followed by séances intended to reach beings that existed beyond the visible world. Eventually, they began calling themselves the Five, and they continued meeting for years. Their séances proved particularly influential for af Klint, whose leap into abstraction was spurred on by the deities who spoke to her.
Spotlight on Klint
Kandinsky also had a big interest in writing literature. In 1912 his book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" was published. In this book, he turned the established idea about art in general upside down. The book became the first theoretical foundation of abstractionism. Having come to an idea, that "the purposes (and therefore, means) of nature and arts are essentially, organically and according to the laws of the Universe are various - and equally great... and equally strong", the artist proclaimed creative process of "self-expression and self-development of spirit". Just like with Matisse, we can see that Kandinsky was breaking free from the traditional art ways. The same way the NFT movement is breaking free from the traditional art world.
Sources:
Thecasualreply.com
Theguardian.com
Tate.org
Artnews.com
Artblart.com
Hilma af Klint
1862 - 1944
Limah is an AI generated collection that is inspired by the works of Hilma af Klint. The Swedish artist is credited with creating some of the earliest known abstract paintings in history.
The Limah AI studied 5 pieces Adulthood No.6, Childhood No. 2, Youth No. 3, The Swan No. 17 and Adulthood No. 7 to generate the 555 Limah that exist on the ethereum blockchain today.
"All the knowledge that is not of the senses, not of the intellect, not of the heart but is the property that exclusively belongs to the deepest aspect of your being...the knowledge of your spirit."
~ Book extract from 'The Five'
"The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke."
~ Hilma af Klint
LIMAH
Do we know for sure that af Klint was the first painter to go so far as to blur the lines between abstraction and realism? The Guggenheim exhibition relied on a theory that her abstractions predate similar ones by Wassily Kandinsky, widely regarded as one of the first to take up non-objective art. There is a fair amount of scholarly debate on this point. After the turn of the twentieth century, she began painting pictures that included curlicuing lines, large swaths of muted colors, and vague animal forms. Nevertheless, because her abstract works may not have been exhibited during her lifetime, her colleagues did not pay much attention to her work in this area.
In 1906, five years before Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint created her first abstract painting in her Stockholm studio. The two artists appear to have traveled a long distance together as if they were two trains sharing the same tracks, all the while remaining completely unaware of one another. Klint came arrived before Kandinsky. Af Klint's work may or may not have been known to Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, two artists who died in the same year as af Klint and helped to popularize abstract art in the United States and Europe. )
Abstraction's significance in art history would only become apparent in the future. Modernist abstraction was firmly established in 1936 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted an exhibition titled Cubism and Abstract Art. Her name wasn't included in this list.
If modernist colleagues were not familiar with her art, at least one important philosopher was. In 1908, af Klint contacted Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner to get his take on her paintings. Some of the more out-there forms of spirituality of the day, like anthrosophy, were pioneered by Steiner and af Klint, both of whom were involved in an area of study known as anthrosophy. However, af Klint's work eluded Steiner, who instructed her to keep it hidden for 50 years before showing it to anyone. Because of this, she may not have exhibited her work as much as she could have done otherwise.