Hilma af Klint

Breaking with traditional botanical art, af Klint juxtaposed her exquisitely rendered blossoms with precisely drawn diagrams: a blooming sunflower is echoed by nested circles; a marsh marigold is accompanied by mirrored spirals; a cluster of budding branches is set against checkerboards of dots and strokes. With this profusion of forms—an expansion of the abstract language for which she is best known—af Klint visualizes “what stands behind the flowers,” demonstrating her belief that careful observation of her surroundings reveals ineffable aspects of the human condition.

Af Klint imagined her portfolio as an atlas—or in botanical terms a flora—that details the plants of Sweden, where she lived and worked. Hers, however, is a flora of the spirit, a mapping of the natural world in spiritual terms that would stand alongside any scientific resource. Putting representation and abstraction, close looking and envisioning, art and botany into dialogue, af Klint’s drawings recognize the interconnectedness of all living things. “I have shown,” she wrote, “that there is a connection between the plant world and the world of the soul.”