The documentary Beyond the Visible directed by Halina Dyrschka, brought a pioneer artists’ works back to light. By Claudia Schergna
When the German philosopher Rudolf Steiner met Hilma af Klint for the first time, he was unable to decipher her paintings. He predicted no one would have been able to comprehend them for the next 50 years. It was 1907, and he was wrong. It would have taken much longer.
Af Klint’s canvases were exceptionally innovative, visionary, something no one had ever seen before. Is it the birth of what would be labelled abstract art but neither Kandinsky, Mondrian, Malevich nor Mirò was yet painting.
Born in Stockholm in 1862, af Klint studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1887 and soon becoming a respected artist in the city. During those years she started exploring spiritual art and Theosophy, a religious movement which incorporates European philosophy with Asian religions. The memory of her didn’t last long after she died in 1944.
Af Klint was the very first abstract painter, but you wouldn’t find her vibrant colours, bold lines and energetic gestural marks in art books and galleries – not until 1986, with the the art show The Spiritual in Art, 42 years after her death. There, at the Los Angeles County Museum, for the first time, an art curator acknowledged that af Klint was a pioneer, planting the seeds for a revolution.
After the exposition of some of her art works, historians started being interested in her. In 2013 the Moderna Museet in Stockholm held a large retrospective with more than 230 painting and in 2018 the Guggenheim Museum in New York dedicated her a solo exposition. In 2019 the German filmmaker Halina Dyrschka shot the first documentary about this incredible painter, to give her the historical recognition she deserves.
“When I started working on this film I received several rejections because she is unknown,” says Dyrschka during an event to present her work. “I found it ridiculous, if we’d never talk about what we don’t know already we would never move forward.”
The panel is hosted by the London film distribution company Modern Films in collaboration with the Mayfair Gallery Richard Saltoun, to discuss the documentary Beyond the Visible. Besides Dyrschka, are also present Valeria Napoleone, art collector and philanthropist, Julia Voss, author of the book Hilma Af Klint: Painting the Unseen and Penny Slinger, American spiritual artist.
“The rejection she received from society didn’t make her give up,” says Slinger. “Hilma af Klint’s work is a gift and this film is a gift.”
At the heart of the discussion are the disadvantages women encounter in the art world and the lack of recognition for their work. “I started in 1997 in New York. At the time the city was magic, there were the Guerriglia Girls, Cindy Sherman,” says Napoleone with a hint of nostalgia.
“After two years of my Master’s I started collecting art and I became aware of women artists not being supported by commercial galleries and museums. I couldn’t figure out how so much talent could be wasted just because of gender.” Af Klint's spiritual work is what many artists find inspiring but also the aspect of her art which is most mysterious and hard to understand. “The spiritual aspect of her art in the film arrives later because we didn’t want to frighten our audience,” says Dyrschka.
Penny Slinger, whose work is deeply inspired by af Klint, agrees with the film director: “Spiritual art freaks people out and is difficult to sell. I was often asked to take the spiritual part off my works.”
Not greatly encouraging for Alexandria Riesberg, a young New York-based spiritual artist who was attending the panel: “I use Thero symbolism to describe this archetypal journey of the feminine artist. Those symbols help me recreate this narrative I’m seeing in my own life.” “Hilma af Klint is one of my biggest inspirations of anything ever,” she adds. “I saw her exhibition at the Guggenheim and it blew my mind. The thing that impressed me more is how her journey as an artist has become this archetypical mythology of the feminine explorer.
“She fought her way in because the world was not ready of her work. She had the courage to step outside of the domestic roles and addressing the imbalance of the feminine as an embodied spiritual energy in an art world that is so patriarchally shaped.”
“How do we re-write history?” urges Napoleone. “What is the most powerful way to make those women fit in?”
For Dyschka, the only way is to talk about them, as she is doing through her film. For the historian and art journalist for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Julia Voss, museums are also responsible: “We need the institutions’ contribution. If we look at the Guggenheim exhibition 31 women, back in 1943, that was the most successful art show of the Guggenheim’s history.”
Richard Saltoun, who partnered with Modern Film to organise the event, is a proudly feminist gallery. “In 2019 we launched 100% women, a whole year in which we only exhibited women artists. Even before our focus was on women artists: we first started with Feminist, Conceptual and Performance artists from the 1960s,” says the gallery assistant Giulia Antoniolli.
“Our biggest aim is to exhibit those artists who are yet under-recognised. They don’t have to be women but, unfortunately, most of the times they are.”
“There is the risk that museums just tick the box and go back to their old way of doing things,” points out Napoleone visibly worried. “Still, we have many men who are gallery directors who don’t care about this. Why does it always have to be women?”
Hilma af Klint has undoubtedly become a symbol of the under-representation of women artists, especially for the younger generation: “It is funny thinking about how much she impacted the young women artists’ community around me,” says Riesberg. “She was unknown and now I know quite a few people who have tattoos of her work.”
“I couldn’t figure out how so much talent could be wasted just because of gender”
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