Kurt Almqvist Libri

The result of a series of lectures delivered during the 2016 Serpentine Galleries exhibition Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen, this volume gathers essays examining the last abstract series made by Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). The paintings were all created in the first half of the year 1920 and are the last paintings af Klint made before turning to watercolour.Reproductions of these images are complemented by essays from Briony Fer, David Lomas, Branden W. Joseph, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum, which shed new light on af Klint and her importance for artists today, also addressing the need for a broader conception of art history that her work proposes.Beautifully designed this book is a key contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on this immensely popular painter.Table of ContentsForeword (Kurt Almqvist & Louise Belfrage) • Plates (Hilma af Klint: Series II, III, IV, V, VI, VII and VIII) • An Extraordinary Opportunity (Hans Ulrich Obrist) • Hilma af Klint: The Outsider Inside Herself (Briony Fer) • Roots to Abstraction: Hilma af Klint and botany (David Lomas) • Knowledge, Painting, Abstraction and Desire (Branden W. Joseph) • Afterword (Daniel Birnbaum • Notes and References • Contributor

New research and cultural context on the life and art of Hilma af Klint The 2018 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Hilma af Paintings for the Future , introduced the general public to the abstract mystical masterpieces of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944). Based on a seminar held at the Guggenheim Museum at the opening of this acclaimed exhibition, this volume compiles the insights of the seminar’s contributors alongside reproductions of works, archival photographs and images from af Klint’s journals.Hilma af Visionary explores the social and spiritual movements that appeared at the turn of the 20th century, inspiring the pioneers of modernism and abstract Kandinsky, Mondrian, Malevich and af Klint. What was the zeitgeist that inspired such an eruption in abstract art? What were the conditions that created Hilma af Klint? Academics and experts Julia Voss, Tracey Bashkoff, Isaac Lubelsky, Linda Dalrymple Henderson and Marco Pasi each take a different approach. Voss analyzes af Klint's biography, pinpointing five important events in her life; Bashkoff presents her connection to Hilla Rebay and her plans for the building of a temple; Lubelsky traces the origins of theosophy in New York; Henderson examines the occult and science; and Pasi considers esotericism’s changing role in culture.

The second installment in an epic and authoritative seven-volume Hilma af Klint catalogue raisonné: the pioneering abstractionist's beloved 'The Paintings for the Temple' series. Between 1906 and 1915, Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) created 193 paintings that she would title The Paintings for the Temple. Colorful, mostly abstract, with biomorphic imagery, these works expressed af Klint's mediumistic vision of spiritual reality, which she hoped would ultimately be installed in a round temple for true spiritual comprehension and enlightenment. Since the internationally acclaimed Guggenheim exhibition of 2018-19, these works have come to number among her most popular, defining and beloved.00This handsomely produced clothbound volume collects these paintings in the second of a projected and collectible seven-volume catalogue raisonné that will present the entirety of af Klint?s work in its dazzling totality for the first time. Produced in cooperation with the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, it features introductions by Daniel Birnbaum, former head of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, and architect of the grand af Klint exhibitions between 2013 and 2019, and Kurt Almqvist, President of the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit.

Gustav III's Collection including his own and other famous architects' drawings, accompanied Gustav IV Adolf during his exile in 1809. The collection was returned to Sweden via a purchase in 1925 by the brothers Helge and Axel Ax:son Johnson and was inherited by Axel's daughter Marie- Claire. It is today stored at Engelsberg's Ironworks and is owned by the Marie-Claire Cronstedt Foundation. The drawings were made by Sweden's leading architects during the 17thand 18th centuries and include, among others, the castles and gardens at Drottningholm, Ekolsund, Haga, Gripsholm, Karlberg, Ulriksdal, Svartsjö, Stockholm and Uppsala. Even Gustav III's own sketches are attributed.