Hilma af Klint The Paintings of the Temple

Hilma af Klint, a painter who creates abstract paintings, use a range of colors, biomorphic shapes and vigorous lines to represent her understanding of the spirit of the world in the universe. Her geometric abstraction allows her to go beyond the visual world, to communicate with spirits in another realm. Her understanding of life, gender and the universe are all evident in her collection of The Paintings for the Temples. The show began with the ten large paintings. She used gigantic scale, bright colors to represent the life cycle of humans from birth to death. With a sequence of colors shifting from blue to orange to purple, you start to see the scientific and spiritual messages that Klint creates to communicate with the spirtual world. Klint believes she is able to communicate with and receive messages from beings of higher consciousness by entering trance states. Snail’s shells are used frequently in her early work, representing continual growth and the concept of evolution. Spirals and circles are then developed to represent on the stages of life and humanity’s connection to the universe. They extend and expand to bring you with the idea of life, bodies and continuity. In her later work, Klint shifted her style with new mode of working with less free moving lines instead of geometric forms in her work. The final group of the work is called the Altarpieces. She used a three-level structure with rings and triangle stacking together to represent the theme of dualities. Klint brings out the spiritual messages in this collection by using circular forms and amid glowing colors.