This ‘fascinating and ambitious’ show at Tate Modern highlights the parallels between the two modernist painters
The premise for this new exhibition is a “weird” one indeed, said Laura Freeman in The Times. On the face of it, the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) have little in common: he was a cosmopolitan modernist, she a visionary mystic; he painted “grids, angles, squares, stripes, a lozenge for a bit of light relief”, she “pastels, petals, threads and rainbows”; his paintings are among the most recognisable in all art history, hers were all but ignored until she was reappraised as an abstract pioneer in recent years. The two never met and were completely unaware of each other’s work. Nevertheless, Tate Modern has brought together dozens of paintings by both artists to highlight the parallels between them.
