Beyond the Visible - Hilma af Klint - Camden Art Centre

Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint

UK Premiere Screening and Talk

Modern Films, Camden Art Centre, Serpentine Galleries and Frieze London 2020 present the UK Premiere of the film Beyond The Visible – Hilma af Klint. – the first film about the life and work of the visionary abstract painter.

The film premiered during Frieze Week 2020: 2 – 8 October. Find out more and watch here.

Beyond The Visible, directed by Halina Dyrschka, is about Hilma af Klint’s life and work, it chronicles her pioneering artistic practice and mystical view of the world, from the beginning of her career at Stockholm’s Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, to her involvement in Theosophy, spiritualist and occult movements, including joining “The Five”, a group of female artists who conducted séances which lead to experiments with automatic writing and drawing, pre-dating the Surrealists by several decades.

A radical pioneer, Hilma af Klint stipulated that her own work should not be shown for twenty years following her death, convinced the world was not yet ready to understand her art.  Dissatisfied with af Klint’s absence from the art historical canon, Beyond The Visible reveals the importance of the artist’s legacy, demanding a reevaluation of Modernism’s evolution and calling into question the broader conveniences of art history, how it is documented and for who’s benefit.

To coincide with the UK premiere an online event took place featuring a live-streamed panel discussion and audience Q&A hosted by curator Daniel Birnbaum, in conversation with the film’s director Halina Dyrschka; artist Josiah McElheny and key curators of Hilma af Klint’s exhibitions including Emma Enderby (Co-curator, Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen, Serpentine Gallery, 2016) and Jenni Lomax (Director, Camden Art Centre (1990-2017) and Curator of Hilma af Klint – An Atom in the Universe, Camden Art Centre, 2006). Watch the panel discussion and walkthrough here.

 

Watch Camden Art Centre's Director Martin Clark introduce the works of Hilma af Klint in The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and The Cosmic Tree

 

 

 

 

Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was an abstract artist before the term existed: a visionary, trailblazing artist inspired by spiritualism, modern science and the riches of the natural world. As early as 1906, she was radically experimenting with abstract imagery, several years before Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian, who are still regarded as the forerunners of 20th-century abstract art. Largely forgotten after her death, her sidelining from patriarchal art historical discourse has been the subject of much recent debate. With her radiant and transcendent body of work – featuring over 1,200 paintings and 26,000 notebooks – remaining hidden away for decades, a long-overdue rediscovery has come in recent years, with her stunning, large-scale works the subject of blockbuster exhibitions including a record-breaking retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2018-2019 and acclaimed exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery (2016) and Camden Art Centre (2006) in the UK.


Beyond The Visible

Released in the UK by Modern Films, BEYOND THE VISIBLE will be released in cinemas and through virtual partners on 9 October 2020. The first film about Hilma af Klint’s life and work, the film chronicles her pioneering artistic practice and mystical view of the world, from the beginning of her career at Stockholm’s Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, to her involvement in Theosophy, spiritualist and occult movements, including joining “The Five”, a group of female artists who conducted séances which lead to experiments with automatic writing and drawing, pre-dating the Surrealists by several decades.