Sunday, January 22
11:30 am EST
FREE (Must RSVP)

This lecture is FREE to all. If you’d like to make a one-time donation, please select an amount at checkout. Donations help us keep our paid content affordable.

PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/month and above. Become a Member HERE.

Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out at 9:30 am EST on the day of the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email [email protected]. A temporary streaming link will be emailed after the event concludes.

The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe.

But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic, thrilled by the newest developments in science, deeply concerned with social change and reforms, in conversation with spiritual forces, and a passionate lover and futurist thinker.

Well before Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction, af Klint was working in a nonrepresentational mode, producing a powerful visual language that continues to speak to audiences today. The exhibition of her work in 2018 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York attracted more than 600,000 visitors, making it the most-attended show in the history of the institution.

Join us tonight as we host Julia Voss for exploring Hilma af Klint's life, work and spiritual worldview.

Julia Voss is a German art historian, art critic, curator, and the author of Hilma af Klint: A Biography, just published by Chicago University Press. Inspired by her first encounter with the artist’s work in 2008, Voss set out to learn Swedish and research af Klint’s life – not only who the artist was but what drove and inspired her. The biography was a bestseller in Germany and on the shortlist of the prestigious Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair in 2020.