Hilma AF Klint behind the flowers

New York,

It has been discussed very often whether or not a some years were advanced to Kandinsky when it comes to disfiguring the figurative and also usually pointed out its close relationship with spiritualism at the time of the Edelweiss society or the Rosicruz order, but beyond its beginnings, in which it carried out naturalistic portraits and landscapes, Hilma AF Klint not only sought to transfer to its painting the messages that the messages theoretically They transmitted, but also the beauty of plants, possessing not very distant enigmas.

Until next September 27, the MoMA in New York first exhibits a portfolio composed of forty -six botanical drawings of the Swedish artist who has recently acquired and dated in spring and summer of the 1919 and 1920. Klint conjugated in them some abstract approach with traditional features of that pictorial subgenre of botany detailed plants discovered in their surroundings with mysterious abstract diagrams; We can see, thus, a spotted sunflower with concentric circles, a narcissus crowned by a whirlwind of primary colors and tree flowers accompanied by a checkerboard of points and strokes. Using these forms, in any case, this author sought to reveal the hidden, What is hidden behind the flowers: It seems that I was convinced that the examination of nature could help us know certain truths about the human condition.

Hilma AF Klint. What Stands Behind the Flowers. MoMa, New York

“What is hidden behind the flowers” is, precisely, the title of this New York exhibition, which MoMA offers with the collaboration of the artist’s foundation in Stock Detailed, which surely had its culminating point in these botanical drawings, in which it did not deny that abstract code. In that eagerness, as she herself pointed out, First, I will try to penetrate the flowers of the earth; I will use plants as a starting point.

In several notebooks, some equally in the exhibition, he gave an account of his reflections on the species and materials he studied and on his constant interest in linking nature and spirituality, using diverse methods for it: in the 1922 series About the observation of flowers and treesused watercolor in vibrant tones that gave the specimens represented a transcendent channel.

While this project was organized, some fortunate findings took place when knowing how Klint’s gaze to the plants had an impact on the whole of his artistic vision. And even unpublished works were discovered: in the archives of the Swedish Museum of Natural History there were seven drawings of fungal species that commissioned the painter the mycologist, also Swedish, Ma Lindblad and that they have given up to MoMA for this occasion, so that the spectators become aware that their production, a priori far away from the scientific context, had ramifications in it. Also, Laura Neufeld, conservative associated with the American center, performed the first technical analysis of AF Klint’s methods and materials on paper; His conclusions are part of the exhibition catalog, profusely enlightened.

Attentive to the rhythms of flowering, Klint imagined this folder as a kind of Atlas, a compendium of flowers in his country that, in short, approached both science and spirituality, the latter linked to the understanding of deep relations between all living beings. Hilma wrote to have shown that There is a connection between the plant world and the soul world.