A New Documentary on Hilma af Klint Traces How Art History Forgot, and Then Rediscovered, One of Its Greatest Pioneers—Watch the Trailer Here

The visionary Swedish artist Hilma af
Klint (1862–1944) was a pioneering abstract painter,
but her place in the art history books is only now being assured.
The first major step in cementing her legacy was the blockbuster 2019
exhibition at the Guggenheim, and now, a new documentary film
coming out this week, Beyond the Visible:
Hilma af Klint, is the latest attempt to chronicle
her contributions to abstract art.

Hilma af Klint began creating her colorful, spiritually guided
canvases in 1906—five years before Wassily Kandinsky made his
first abstract work—yet she was all but forgotten after her death.
That was partly by her own design—her will prohibited the
exhibition of her work for decades—but it is also symptomatic of
larger tendency in art history to under-recognize the
accomplishments of women artists.

In this case, neglecting to acknowledge the primacy of af Klint
is a massive omission from perhaps the most important artistic
development of the 20th century.

“If you compare her to the supposed genius men, their steps
toward abstraction were very timid,” says artist Josiah
McElheny in the film’s trailer. “In order to tell the history
of abstraction, now you have to rewrite it, because basically all
the people who said ‘it happened in this year,’ well no, it
didn’t.” (In 2011, McElheny incorporated historical works by
artists including Klint into his solo show at
Stockholm’s Moderna Museet.)

The film’s director, Halina Dyrschka, first discovered af Klint
in 2013, in a newspaper article about the exhibition “Hilma af
Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction,” which originated at the Museum of
Modern Art in Stockholm. Dyrschka saw the show when it traveled to
Berlin, and was blown away by the artist’s work.

“I almost felt personally insulted when I read that this was a
new discovery and the paintings have been hidden for decades,” she
said in a statement. “Who would be interested in marginalizing this
artist’s accomplishments? And why?”

What Dyrschka found was that the art establishment has long
been content with a male-dominated narrative that overlooked a
pioneering woman artist. As recently as 2013, a show at New York’s
Museum of Modern Art titled “Inventing Abstraction: 1910–1925”
deigned even a mention of af Klint.

“Hilma af Klint would cause such an upheaval in art history,
that some would say ‘It’s better to leave her outside,’” says art
critic and historian Julia Voss in the movie’s trailer.

And yet, the rediscovery of af Klint’s work has been hailed
around the world, her practice resonating with audiences and
breaking attendance records at the
Guggenheim. Now, her journey of rediscovery can be followed in
film form, beginning on April 17.

“It is more than time,” said Dyrschka, “to tell the untold
heroine stories.”

See the film’s trailer below. 

The post A New Documentary on Hilma af Klint Traces How Art
History Forgot, and Then Rediscovered, One of Its Greatest
Pioneers—Watch the Trailer Here appeared first on artnet
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