teNeues Stationery is pleased to be featuring the famous artist Hilma af Klint on two notebooks and a new set of playing cards this season! Now you may be wondering, who is Hilma? I didn't even know about her and I studied art history... 

Read on below to learn all about this interesting artist and check out our new stationery featuring her work.

About Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint was born at Karlberg Palace, Stockholm, on October 26, 1862. She was one of the first women to attend the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. In 1882, at the age of 20, she enrolled at the Academy and spent the next five years studying drawing, portraiture and landscape painting.

Hilma af Klint was convinced that reality was not confined to the physical world. Parallel to the material dimension there existed an inner realm the contents of which were as true and real as those of the outer world. In order to convey this message, Hilma af Klint employed dualistic symbols, letters and words to express that “Everything is Unity”. Nurturing an inner, spiritual maturity, Hilma af Klint aimed to develop an artistic approach to her esoteric material and express it in her paintings. She struck a delicate balance between regulating her inner impulses and expressing them in her work. 

Hilma af Klint envisioned that her work would contribute to influencing not only the consciousness of people in general but also society itself. However, she was convinced that her contemporaries were not ready to understand her art. She believed that her artwork belonged to the future and only then would they be understood by the public.

On her death in autumn 1944, Hilma af Klint left more than 1,300 works, which had only been seen by a handful of people, in addition to some 125 notebooks. In one of them she stipulated that her work should not be publicly displayed until 20 years after her death.

Hilma af Klint’s international debut was at the 1986 The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Paintings 1890–1985 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Her works have since been displayed in numerous exhibitions in the Nordic countries, Europe and the United States. In 2013, Moderna Museet in Stockholm held the hitherto largest retrospective of the artist, featuring some 230 paintings. After Stockholm, the exhibition travelled throughout Europe and was seen by more than one million visitors. Its impact was significant, particularly the multidisciplinary research it gave rise to.

Hilma af Klint Small Bullet Journal

Hilma af Klint Playing Cards

Source: The Hilma af Klint Foundation