Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers @ MoMA, New York

Hilma af Klint 

What Stands Behind Flowers

MoMA, New York

May 11 - September 27, 2025

Hilma af Klint 

Tulipa sp. (Tulip) 

Sheet 35 from the portfolio Nature Studies. May 20, 1920 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.8 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint 

Gagea lutea (Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem), 

Pulmonaria officinalis (Common Lungwort), 

Tussilago farfara (Coltsfoot), 

Draba verna (Common Whitlowgrass), 

Pulsatilla vulgaris (European Pasqueflower) 

Sheet 2 from the portfolio Nature Studies. April 24–30, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 9/16 in. (49.9 × 26.9 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint 

Convallaria majalis (Lily of the Valley), 

Geum rivale (Water Avens), 

Polygala vulgaris (Common Milkwort) 

Sheet 11 from the portfolio Nature Studies. June 10–11, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint 

Luzula campestris (Field Woodrush), Viola hirta (Hairy Violet), 

Viola odorata (Sweet Violet), 

Chrysospleniumalternifolium 

(Alternate-Leaf Golden Saxifrage), 

Equisetumarvense (Field Horsetail), 

Caltha palustris (Marsh Marigold), 

Ranunculus ficaria (Fig Buttercup),  Carex sp. (Sedge) 

Sheet 4 from the portfolio Nature Studies. May 9–15, 1919  

Watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 9/16 in. (49.9 × 26.9 cm). 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

The Museum of Modern Art presents an exhibition showcasing MoMA’s recent acquisition of Nature Studies, a portfolio of 46 botanical drawings by the Swedish artist HILMA AF KLINT (1862–1944), which will be on display for the first time. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers explores af Klint’s engagement with the natural world. Created during the spring and summer of 1919 and 1920, the Nature Studies portfolio presents the wonders of Sweden’s flora and showcases the artist’s keen botanical eye. Hilma af Klint combines her renowned approach to abstraction with traditional botanical drawing, juxtaposing detailed renderings of plants discovered in her surroundings with enigmatic abstract diagrams. Examples include a sunflower paired with concentric circles, a narcissus crowned by a pinwheel of primary colors, and tree blossoms accompanied by checkerboards of dots and strokes. Through these forms, af Klint seeks to reveal, in her words, “what stands behind the flowers,” reflecting her belief that studying nature uncovers truths about the human condition. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers is organized by Jodi Hauptman, The Richard Roth Senior Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, with Kolleen Ku, Curatorial Assistant, and Chloe White, Louise Bourgeois Fellow, Department of Drawings and Prints. Realized with the participation of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm.

The exhibition focuses on the years 1917 to 1922, contextualizing the MoMA portfolio and highlighting a pivotal shift in af Klint’s practice. In 1917, no longer satisfied with only receiving direction from spiritual guides, Hilma af Klint embarked on a path of self-study, culminating in the Nature Studies drawings. The exhibition opens with this new approach, seen in her adoption of an abstract diagrammatic vocabulary in works like the 1917 Atom series, one of many key loans from the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm. This section also highlights in landscapes and botanical drawing her ongoing dedication to observation. As Hilma af Klint noted, “First, I shall try to penetrate the flowers of the earth; use as a point of departure the plants of the earth.” The second section focuses on the Nature Studies, along with related notebooks that allow visitors to experience af Klint’s reflections on the plants she studied, as well as botanical source materials. The final section presents her ongoing interest in exploring the connection between nature and spirituality, but with a new method. In the 1922 series On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees, Hilma af Klint employs a wet-on-wet watercolor technique, using vibrant color to express the spiritual power of plants.

Hilma af Klint 

Helianthus annuus (Common Sunflower) 

Sheet 27 from the portfolio Nature Studies. September 3, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 3/4 × 10 9/16″ (50.2 × 26.8 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint

Prunus padus (European Bird Cherry), 

Prunus avium (Sweet Cherry), 

Prunus cerasus (Sour Cherry), 

Prunus domestica (European Plum) 

Sheet 7 from the portfolio Nature Studies. May 27–June 3, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint

Tilia × europaea (Common Linden) 

Sheet 22 from the portfolio Nature Studies. July 29, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

“While we often think of artists of the early 20th century as focused on new technologies—and the hustle and bustle of modern life—for many, the natural world was a crucial touchstone. MoMA’s Nature Studies reveal af Klint as an artist uniquely attuned to nature. We hope that attunement—her demonstration of careful observation and discovery of all that stands behind the flowers—encourages our audience to look closely and see their own surroundings, whether here in the city or beyond, in new ways,” says Jodi Hauptman.

Hilma af Klint

Nos. 6–14b from the series Group 2. February 5–12, 1919 

Watercolor, graphite, and metallic paint on paper, 

14 3/16 × 19 11/16 in. (36 × 50 cm) 

Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm (HaK 448)

Hilma af Klint

No. 8 from The Atom Series. January 13, 1917 

Watercolor, graphite, and metallic paint on paper, 

10 5/8 × 9 13/16 in. (27 × 25 cm) 

Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm (HaK 360)

Hilma af Klint 

Birch from the series On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees. 1922 

Watercolor on paper, 6 11/16 × 9 13/16 in. (17 × 25 cm) 

Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm (HaK 639)

The exhibition reveals, for the first time, the extent of af Klint’s plant knowledge and the ways her botanical experience shaped her artistic vision. Through research for this exhibition, seven previously unknown drawings by Hilma af Klint of mushroom species, commissioned by the renowned Swedish mycologist M. A. Lindblad, were discovered in the archives at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. They are loaned to MoMA, and shown in the US for the first time, to demonstrate af Klint’s commitment to close observation of the natural world and her drawing within a scientific context. The discovery was made through the research collaboration of Dr. Lena Struwe, director of the Chrysler Herbarium at Rutgers University and professor at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, a contributor to the exhibition and its catalogue; and Dr. Johannes Lundberg, curator in the Department of Botany at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, who identified this previously unknown group of drawings. Further, as a crucial element of the exhibition’s research, MoMA associate conservator Laura Neufeld conducted the firstever technical analysis of af Klint’s methods and materials on paper.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and a limited-edition facsimile. 

Cover of Hilma af Klint: 

What Stands Behind the Flowers 

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, 

New York, 2025

The lavishly illustrated catalogue, Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, presents the 46 drawings alongside contextualizing artworks and translations of the artist’s previously unpublished writings. An overview essay by Jodi Hauptman explores af Klint’s portfolio and the circumstances of its creation, and essays by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Laura Neufeld, and Lena Struwe unpack the imagery, materiality, and botanical knowledge of these works. 272 pages, 160 color illustrations. Hardcover, $55. ISBN: 978-1-63345-168-1. 

Hilma af Klint: Flora is a deluxe facsimile of the full portfolio, published in a limited edition of 500. Each of the 46 drawings are presented on its own sheet at full scale, and the collection is enclosed in a luxe clamshell case. $500. ISBN: 978-1-63345-169-8.

Both editions are published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and will be available at MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART - MoMA, NEW YORK

moma.org

Hilma af Klint @ David Zwirner, New York - Tree of Knowledge

Hilma af Klint: Tree of Knowledge

David Zwirner, New York

November 3 — December 18, 2021

Hilma af Klint

Tree of Knowledge, No. 1, 1913–1915

Courtesy David Zwirner

David Zwirner presents Tree of Knowledge, an exhibition of a rare set of Hilma af Klint’s groundbreaking 1913–1915 series of works on paper of the same title. This recently discovered group of eight watercolors is among the few works by the artist to exist outside of the holdings of the Hilma af Klint Foundation. This is a singular opportunity to experience the artist’s revelatory work, and follows the highly acclaimed 2018–2019 exhibition Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 

Though little known during her lifetime and for decades after, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) has come to be recognized as one of the most important and inventive artists of the twentieth century. When she began making vibrant, symbolic paintings as early as 1906, her work was radically unlike anything that had come before, and preceded the abstract work of artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich by several years. 

In contrast to those artists, who were more broadly credited for inventing abstraction, af Klint was not directly engaged in any avant-garde circles or art movements, coming to abstraction through her own artistic and personal evolution and development. Hilma Af Klint studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm for five years starting in 1882, where she gained a reputation as an accomplished painter of naturalistic portraits and landscapes. As with many of her peers, Hilma af Klint was profoundly interested in spiritual movements and philosophies, including the then emergent teachings of Theosophy and Anthroposophy as well as Buddhism and Rosicrucianism, among others. She became actively involved in examining the mysteries of the supernatural world, and her interest in visualizing the invisible forces beyond the physical realm led her to explore and represent spiritualist ideas and sentiments in her art. Together with a group of like-minded women who called themselves “The Five,” she held séances to communicate with the spiritual realm. In 1906, at the age of forty-four, af Klint accepted her major spiritual “commission”: over the next nine years she created a series of 193 visionary works that she titled Paintings for the Temple, the dynamic and bold imagery of which was conveyed to her through a medium. These elaborate and profound compositions constitute some of the earliest abstract paintings in the history of Western art. Hilma Af Klint showed her work to very few people during her lifetime, believing that society was not ready to understand the nature of her art and that it should be left to future generations.

While the majority of her groundbreaking work is held together in the collection of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, this exhibition features a rarely seen set of Hilma af Klint’s Tree of Knowledge series, which the artist created in 1913 and 1915 with renewed focus after her four-year hiatus after completing ambitious mediumistic paintings mentioned above. This series reflects her interest in distilling her iconography and in further articulating the spiritualist ideas and philosophies that she was engaged with. As Åke Fant notes, “All of the works in this series feature a tree with a heart-shaped crown. A circle surrounds the tree trunk. All eight paintings in this series feature variations on this theme. We are dealing with a process, here, that goes from innocence and balance to a complex bifurcation into male and female, to the Fall from Grace and the conception of a child.” [1] These complex, dynamic compositions mix biblical references to Genesis with esoteric iconography and vivid colors and motifs. The undulous, organic forms recall the stylings of art nouveau with an almost taxonomic attention to detail, resulting in fully formed visual allegories about the circle of life and death, darkness and light, spirit and matter, and being and becoming.

In the early 1920s, Hilma af Klint gave the set of watercolors as a gift to Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the spiritual and philosophical movement known as Anthroposophy, which influenced her. Around 1927, the works came into the possession of Albert Steffen, who became president of the Anthroposophical Society after Steiner’s death in 1925. It was not known that af Klint had made two versions of the Tree of Knowledge suite (the other is in the holdings of the af Klint Foundation) until the recent rediscovery of this set in the Albert Steffen Stiftung, Dornach, Switzerland. It is currently owned by a private collector. 

On the occasion of the exhibition, David Zwirner Books publishes a fully illustrated catalogue around this body of work with a newly commissioned essay by celebrated af Klint scholar Julia Voss, whose comprehensively researched Hilma af Klint, a Biography is forthcoming from The University of Chicago Press in September 2022 (the bestselling German edition was published in 2020 by S. Fischer). Also forthcoming by David Zwirner Books in 2022 is The Five Lives of Hilma af Klint, a graphic novel by Phillipp Deines with a foreword by Julia Voss that illustrates key moments in the artist’s life. 

Accompanying this exhibition, David Zwirner Online presents an Exceptional Works online viewing room exploring the history behind this remarkable set of watercolor works on paper.

HILMA AF KLINT was born in Solna, outside Stockholm in 1862, and studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1882 to 1888. 

Due to her request not to show her work until decades after her death, her abstract work remained largely unseen for many years. The beginning of Hilma af Klint’s broader international recognition came in 1986 in the group exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1945 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Netherlands, both in 1987.

Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been presented at numerous institutions including P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, New York (1989); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1989; traveled to various venues in Scandinavia until 1991; also in 2005–2006); Albertina, Vienna (1991–1992; traveled to Kulturhaus der Stadt Graz, Austria, 1992; Museum Moderner Kunst, Passau, Germany, 1992); The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2004–2005); Camden Arts Centre, London (2006); and the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, Netherlands (2010). In 2013 to 2016, a major traveling exhibition of her work took place at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Museo Picasso, Málaga, Spain; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, among other venues. Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen was presented at the Serpentine Galleries, London, in 2016, and Hilma af Klint: Possible Worlds was on view at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo in 2018. In 2018 to 2019, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, presented Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, the first retrospective exhibition of the artist in North America. The exhibition attracted over 600,000 visitors, making it the most popular show in the museum’s history. Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium, an exhibition featuring over 200 works by the artist, was featured at Moderna Museet, Malmö, in 2020 to 2021. From December 4, 2021, to March 27, 2022, Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings will be on view at City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand. 

Several of Hilma af Klint’s works are included in current group exhibitions, such as The Art of Society, 1900–1945, the inaugural collection presentation at the newly restored Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, which opened on August 22, 2021, and will be on long-term view until July 2, 2023. Her work is part of Women in Abstraction at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (October 22, 2021 - February 27, 2022); the show was previously on view at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 2021. 

Other notable group exhibitions featuring works by the artist include Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1998); Traces du Sacré, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2008; traveled to Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2008–2009); Il Palazzo Enciclopedico, 55th Venice Biennale (2013); The Keeper, New Museum, New York (2016); Intuition, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (2017); A New Age: The Spiritual in Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2019–2020); and Yael Davids: A Daily Practice, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2020).

[1] Åke Fant, “Phase Two: The W Series, or ‘The Tree of Knowledge,’” in Hilma af Klint: Occult Painter and Abstract Pioneer (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2021), p. 64.

DAVID ZWIRNER

34 East 69th Street, New York, NY

www.davidzwirner.com

Flowers in Art @ ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishoj

FLOWERS IN ART 

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj

Through 9 January 2022

A major exhibition at ARKEN tells the story of humankind’s fascination with the world of flowers. It examines how flowers in art reflect changing worldviews, outlooks on nature and social conditions – from the sensuous flower paintings of the nineteenth century to the eco-critical currents of contemporary art.

Marc Quinn 

Bhasat Wilap at Assi Ghat, 2010 

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art 

Photo: Anders Sune Berg

Andy Warhol  

Flowers, 1970 

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk 

Photo: Poul Buchard / Brøndum & Co.

J.L. Jensen  

Still Life with Flowers in an Antique Vase on a Marble Tabletop, 1834 Thorvaldsens Museum 

Photo: Thorvaldsens Museum

Flowers: we decorate our homes with them, use them as messengers to convey our innermost feelings and find healing in their scents and vitality. Flowers have always fascinated us and found their way into art. The exhibition Flowers in Art at ARKEN examines the many and varied relationships between flower and humankind expressed in art, as represented here by works by fifty-two international and Danish artists.

Says curator Dea Antonsen: ‘Flowers have been a central motif throughout art history, but in these climate-critical times the flower motif takes on new and poignant relevance as we have to rethink our relationship with nature. The exhibition brings together iconic, historical works and cutting-edge contemporary art, prompting new perspectives to emerge on how we humans “consume” flowers, stage ourselves by means of flowers and shape the world through our relationships with flowers’.

Tony Matelli

Arrangement, 2013

Courtesy the artist and Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, Paris

Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano

7th of April 2020 (Quince), 2020

Courtesy the artists, ChertLüdde, kamel mennour and Travesia Cuatro

Kapwani Kiwanga  

The Marias, 2020 

Courtesy Centre d’art contemporaine d’Ivry – le Crédac, 

the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin. 

Photo: Marc Domage

As a motif in art, the flower has had several heydays. One of these was the nineteenth century’s soulful depictions of the beauty and vitality of flowers, which were part of an overall quest to understand the essence of nature and how the world worked. Flower motifs appear in new ways in art today, a time when scientists issue dire warnings about biodiversity crises and young people take to the streets for the sake of the climate. The romantic notion of unspoiled nature has been lost, and contemporary artists rethink the relationship between flower and humankind in works full of finely attuned sensibilities, humour and critique.

Alhed Larsen

Rhododendron, n.d. 

The Johannes Larsen Museum 

Photo: Jens Frederiksen

Hilma af Klint

On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees, 1922

The Hilma af Klint Foundation

Photo: Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg

The Clearing (Yellow, Purple and Rosehip Flower), 2015 (detail)

Courtesy the artists and Lisson Gallery

Photo: Jack Hems

The exhibition is in itself a diverse bouquet of sensory experiences, presenting many and varied works that depict flowers in such diverse media as painting, sculpture, photography, film and installation art. Bringing together illustrious artists of the past such as Odilon Redon, Claude Monet, J.L. Jensen and Hilma af Klint with modern and contemporary artists that include Marc Quinn, Andy Warhol, Melanie Bonajo, Tony Matelli and Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano, Kapwani Kiwanga, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, the exhibition forges new connections between the historical roots of the flower motif and the critical agendas of contemporary art.

The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue in Danish and English with contributions from, among others, Danish curator Dea Antonsen, American historian of science Lorraine Daston, Polish philosopher Monika Bakke, Danish art historian Rasmus Kjærboe and Austrian literary scholar Isabel Kranz.

ARKEN MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj

www.arken.dk