They never met. They never saw nor even knew of each other’s work. One was a Swedish visionary, taking directions (she claimed) from angels, the other an ascetically high-minded Dutch modernist. Yet they are paired together in Tate Modern’s immense and enthralling show with the startlingly counterintuitive aim of discovering their commonality.
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a new age artist born before her time. That she seemed to know it herself is at least part of the legend. At her death, in some obscurity, Af Klint left instructions that her prodigious output not be shown in public for another 20 years. Audiences of the future, she believed, might be more receptive to her highly esoteric paintings, with their vocabulary of petals and sepals, suns, seeds and planets, radiant triangles, tendrils and discs. She was proved right, more than seven decades later, when the Guggenheim’s 2018 retrospective became the biggest hit in the museum’s history.
