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Famed abstract artists capture nature as you’ve never seen it before

The pioneering work of Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian, who trained in the late 19th century, is finally brought into conversation at the Tate Modern in London

By Simon Ings

26 April 2023

Hilma af Klint The Ten Largest, Group IV, No. 9, Old Age, 1907 Courtesy of The Hilma af Klint Foundation

Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, Group IV, No. 9, Old Age, 1907.

Hilma af Klint Foundation

AT THE Tate Modern gallery in London, two pioneering artists who never met are finally brought into conversation.

Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian trained as landscape painters in the late 19th century – af Klint in Sweden, Mondrian in the Netherlands. They also died in the same year, 1944, by which time each had developed a unique abstract style.

Both worked in an era coming to terms with huge advances in microscopy, radiography and photography. The world available to the human senses had been revealed as a mere sliver of that accessible to science.

Each artist’s output included what we would now call scientific “visualisation”. Af Klint conveyed insights about how things grow in paintings inspired by botanical illustration, as in No. 9, Old Age from The Ten Largest series (main image).

Piet Mondrian Arum Lily; Blue flower, 1908-1909 Kunstmuseum Den Haag ? bequest Salomon B. Slijper

Arum Lily; Blue flower 1908-1909. Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Bequest Salomon B. Slijper.j

Mondrian’s interest in the mechanics of visual perception saw him break images down to their perceptual units, so that his Arum Lily; Blue flower (pictured above) is an assembly of lines, lozenge shapes and diagonals.

Serie W, Nr 1. Kunskapens tr?d, 1913 Akvarell, gouache, blyerts, metallf?rg och bl?ck p? papper 45,7 ? 29,5 cm HAK133 Hilma af Klint, Tree of Knowledge, The W Series, No. 1, 1913. Courtesy of The Hilma af Klint Foundation?

Hilma af Klint, Tree of Knowledge, The W Series, No. 1, 1913.

Hilma af Klint Foundation

Af Klint’s “world tree” paintings grew almost diagrammatic in their effort to express the cosmic connections between all life, as in Tree of Knowledge (pictured above). Her attempts to map her own perceptual associations are more startling still.

Serie SUW/UW, Grupp IX/SUW, nr 19. Svanen, nr 19, 1915 Olja p? duk 148,5 ? 152 cm HAK167 ? Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Hilma af Klint, The Swan, The SUW Series, Group IX, No. 19, 1914-1915. Courtesy of The Hilma af Klint Foundation

Hilma af Klint, The Swan, The SUW Series, Group IX, No. 19, 1914-1915.

Hilma af Klint Foundation

The two works above and below are the culmination of a series that began with an image of two swans. Shown here are The Swan, No. 19 (pictured above) and No. 17 (pictured below), from The SUW Series, Group IX.

Serie SUW/UW, Grupp IX/SUW, nr 17. Svanen, nr 17, 1915 Olja p? duk 150,5 ? 151 cm HAK165 ? Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk Hilma af Klint, The Swan, The SUW Series, Group IX, No. 17, 1914-1915. Courtesy of The Hilma af Klint Foundation

The Swan, The SUW Series, Group IX, No. 17, 1914-1915

Hilma af Klint Foundation

Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of life is at the Tate Modern until 3 September.

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