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  • Meet Hilma af Klint,

  • a pioneer of abstract art.

  • af Klint began working as an artist in Sweden

  • around the turn of the 20th century.

  • She belonged to the first generation of women

  • to train at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm

  • and became a successful

  • portraitist and landscape painter.

  • She was interested in science, maths, nature

  • and, like many artists and thinkers

  • at the time, spiritualism.

  • af Klint met regularly with four women

  • for prayer, seances and meditation.

  • They called themselves "The Five."

  • It was during these meetings

  • that af Klint believed

  • she was called upon by spirits

  • who guided and inspired her

  • to create new images.

  • The results were unlike

  • anything seen in art at the time.

  • Otherworldly shapes,

  • cryptic symbols and words

  • filled giant canvases

  • in radiant colour combinations.

  • Even Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich,

  • the artists historically

  • credited with making the first

  • European abstract images,

  • were yet to make this creative leap.

  • But af Klint's attempts

  • to find a receptive audience were unsuccessful.

  • She believed her paintings

  • contained messages for all humanity,

  • but that only a future audience

  • would understand them.

  • She left instructions for them

  • to be hidden from public view until

  • at least 20 years after her death.

  • af Klint left behind over 125 notebooks

  • and more than a thousand artworks,

  • an extraordinary artistic legacy.

  • Their re-discovery gives us,

  • now, the chance to unravel

  • the enigma of Hilma af Klint.

  • and to consider how her life's work

  • changes the story of modern art.

Meet Hilma af Klint,

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