Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings

The Art Gallery of New South Wales presents a major survey in the Asia Pacific region of visionary Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944).

Her remarkable body of abstract and mystical paintings bring new perspectives to the narratives of modern art. 

Stored away and scarcely known for decades, the startling re-discovery of af Klint’s ‘secret paintings’ has captured the imagination of contemporary audiences, with a 2019 exhibition of her work at the Guggenheim Museum breaking attendance records and taking New York by storm.

Graduating in 1887 from Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, af Klint was recognised as a talented naturalistic painter but in 1906 chose to pursue a radically different path as an artist. No one had created paintings like hers before – so monumental in scale, with such radiant colour combinations, enigmatic symbols and other-worldly shapes. In an era of limited creative freedom for women, her paintings became an outlet for her exceptional intelligence, spiritual quest and ground-breaking artistic vision.

Believing that viewers of her time were not ready for what she had created, af Klint left instructions that her work should be kept secret for twenty years after her death. More than a century after she painted her most celebrated works, Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings provides an in-depth exploration of the artist’s body of work.