Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods
With texts by Iris Müller-Westermann
Edited by Christine Burgin
Translations by Kerstin Lind Bonnier, Elizabeth Clark Wessel and Anne Posten
(Christine Burgin/University of Chicago Press) Buy $45

At the turn of the century, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) created a body of work that left visible reality behind, exploring the radical possibilities of abstraction years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich or Piet Mondrian, acknowledged fathers of 20th century abstraction. Like many of her contemporaries, af Klint was interested in the invisible relationships that scientists at the turn of the century were discovering shape the world. She strongly believed in a spiritual dimension to the universe and devoted her life to an exploration of this realm.

Hilma af Klint's process of investigation took many forms and drew on systems and symbols outside the traditional language of art. Notes and Methods traces the origins of her powerful abstract work. Included are the first mediumistic drawings she created with The Five; Flowers, Mosses and Lichens, a spiritual explication of the plant world; and the Blue Notebooks in which af Klint catalogued her most important body of work, The Paintings for the Temple.

Notes and Methods is the first extensive English translation of the writings of Hilma af Klint. In addition to translations of all notebooks reproduced, the book also includes Letters and Words Pertaining to Works by Hilma af Klint, an invaluable guide to the meaning behind the work compiled by Hilma af Klint herself.

From a 1904 notebook of The Five




From the Blue notebook of 1908 paintings by Hilma af Klint




From the Blue notebook of 1914-1915 paintings by Hilma af Klint




From the notebook Flowers, Mosses and Lichens, 1919-1920