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In this moment, I'm aware,

living as I do in this world,

that I am an atom
in the universe,

possessing infinite possibilities
of development...

And I want to explore
these possibilities.

That's wonderful.
I didn't know that.

That's the real discovery
of modern physics,

which she puts into words:

We all believe

that the universe consists of atoms

and that these atoms
determine the universe.

But it's the other way around.

And when she says she feels
like an atom in the universe,

she's also saying

that she's building the universe
from her inner self

while also receiving the signals
she needs from the universe

to create new forms which she
shows us as atoms: Wonderful!

A thought crystallizes the universe

into geometrical figures.

You must learn to ignore your fear,

for without the will
to believe in yourself,

nothing good will happen.

We are not here forever.

So it's not at all astonishing
that someone once wondered about

what it means to be in the world

and how everything
fits together...

And came up with a huge answer.

The strange thing is,

I only found out about it
more than 100 years later.

Hmph. Art history
has to be rewritten.

Three great abstract artists
died in 1944:

Wassily kandinsky,

piet mondrian,

and hilma af klint.

Now we have a real scandal.

Suddenly, more than 50 years
after history was written,

completely out of the blue,

at least for the general public,

we discover this woman

who painted abstract works
before kandinsky,

creating this huge oeuvre,
fully independently,

and by a kind of miracle
it's all stayed together.

It's like finding a time capsule
in Sweden.

And now we have to ask:
How should we integrate it?

I had never heard of her before.

And I have been studying art
at university, so...

Art history is a man's suit.

Imagine a man's suit.

So the fiber is man.

So all these women
have been always

acted as decoration.

Dear Mr. neumann,

all that is missing,
is the photograph

of the "first abstract painting,”

which no doubt is
standing rolled up somewhere.

Since it's neither
numbered nor signed,

I would like photographic proof

that the picture was painted
by me, in the year 1911.

It is indeed the very first
abstract picture in the world,

for not a single painter was doing
abstract work at that time.

It is therefore
an "historic painting".

Yours, kandinsky.

So, in order to tell
the history of abstraction now,

you have to rewrite it.

Because, basically,

all the people who said,
"it happened in this year,"

well, no, it didn't,
it happened in 190...

What we know is that she did exhibit
her early, naturalistic works.

But never in her lifetime

did she put
any of her abstract work on show.

Hilma af klint's project
was something much grander

than what we today call "art."

It was all about seeing
the world we live in

in a larger context,

to understand who we really are

in a cosmic perspective.

So...

Let's rewrite art history.

Well, in science,

a citation can always
be overturned,

but in art history,

it seems like citations
cannot be overturned.

An "historic painting.”

So, when you write art history,

you cite was was written before,

and you can add,
but you can never overturn.

There was this exhibition at moma
entitled "inventing abstraction"

and not one word was said
or written about hilma af klint.

And this attests to a hostility
that speaks volumes.

In answer to my inquiry,

the museum of modern art
in New York,

the so-called Vatican
of art history, replied,

they weren't so sure
whether hilma af klint's art

actually worked
like abstract art.

After all,

she hadn't exhibited
in her lifetime,

so how could one tell?

So it makes it almost impossible

to insert hilma into...
Reinsert anybody,

but especially somebody
who would disturb the history

so much as hilma.

But it might be because
being so early,

hilma af klint would cause
such an upheaval in art history,

that some would say:
It's better to leave her outside.

I want to acquire real insights
about our existence on earth

in relation to
the center of the universe.

She was a delicate person

with beautiful blue eyes
that looked right through one.

And she was what, in olden days,
was called "charming" in a shy way.

It broke out when one met her.

I admired her enormously,

and I saw what she had accomplished.

How she managed to do all of this
on her own

remains a mystery to us.

All the works that may only be
opened 20 years after my death

are marked with the above sign.

It was all packed up
after she died.

Her nephew inherited it all
and wasn't too happy about that.

So it turned out
that Erik had to look after it.

Which was quite touching,

but came as a shock to us,

because it was
a great responsibility

and we were by no means prepared.

1,500 paintings

and books with
over 26,000 pages.

What should one do?

And nobody understood
what this is.

So, you can imagine
these crates lying here,

and were there for 20 years.

I mean, it gets very hot
in the summer,

and then in the winter,
we have -15,

and in the summer,
it could be +40 here.

And that they survived,
it's just amazing,

it's a miracle.

Okay.

So.

So, this is Sweden sea atlas,

svensk sea atlas.

As a naval family,

we're very famous
for the charting,

the naval charting.

We have seven generations,

father, son as nhaval officers.

What might it be like
for a girl to grow up

in a family of naval officers?

Hilma was like the rat

that the cat
has brought into the house.

She was a female,

she was well-educated,

she had a mind of her own,

and she painted
like nobody else.

And she was controversial.

Soin 1862,
hilma af klint was born

into an aristocratic family

and lived for the first
ten years of her life

in karlberg castle,

a naval cadet school
hear Stockholm.

There, her father,
Victor af klint,

taught not only
the young sea cadets...

So, besides school,
she was taught at home

mathematics and astronomy
and navigation, and so on.

He also encouraged and supported

his daughter's talents.

Where did we have her?

Yeah.

Number 805,
hilma af klint, of course.

And it says what
her father's occupation was

and when she was born,

and she registered
the first time

the fourth of September, 1882.

She was, I would say,

the second generation
of women at the academy

who studied, so to say,

and received a full education.

The models were male,

they had some kind of...
Some very small trousers

or some kind of cloth,

like, draped over
the essential part.

Clearly, hilma af klint
broke the rules,

which only applied to women.

Obviously, outside the academy,

there were other possibilities.

What I find fascinating
about her naturalistic early works,

is that she never tried to make
people more beautiful than they are.

In accordance with whatever
ideal there might have been.

This is someone
who not only has an eye,

but is also trying to understand
the world in visual terms.

Well, she had a couple
of rewards, really, in money.

She got 50 Swedish kronor
in '84 for drawing an anatomy,

and '88, her last term here,

she got 100 Swedish kronor
for painting a model,

and 100 Swedish kronor
is a lot of money

at that time.

One reason why they were
accepted at the art academy

was because there were
lots of aristocratic women

not being married at that time.

When they were not married,

their older brother
had to support them.

They found out

that giving the women
a good training at the academy

would give them a job
and an income

so they could
support themselves.

There are several of these
lying here.

And it works.

Hilma af klint becomes

a successful portrait
and landscape painter.

She also earns her own money

as an illustrator,

and even with drawings
for a veterinary institute.

But wasn't there more to come,

much more?

Although she left piles of books

with notes about her work,

there's almost nothing personal
to be found,

not even a postcard.

Have you read them all? =-no.

That's a beautiful one,
look at that.

But I did find some hints

that her life must have been
enriched in many ways.

Notes from the Italian journey

Leonardo da Vinci.

Bellini Madonna, beautiful

She had the baltic exhibition
in 1914 in malmo.

She showed her
academic paintings

together with, how do you say,

the union of
the Swedish women painters.

By the way,

another artist also presented
a landscape painting

at the baltic exhibition:

Wassily kandinsky.

Should hilma and wassily
happen to have met there,

they could have told one another

that their work
was already moving

in other directions.

In order to create work that is
strong and powerful,

I have been forced to renounce
the dearest wish of my youth:

To be able to reproduce
outer form and color.

Those granted the gift
of seeing more deeply

can see beyond form

and concentrate
on the wondrous aspect

hiding behind every form,

which is called life.

If you compare her to the men,

the supposed “genius” men,

their steps towards abstraction
were very timid, in a way...

Like, very slow, year...

It took years for them to do,

and you can sort of see
elements of their later vision

creeping in slowly
to their paintings.

This is someone who knows

how to work with color,
composition and format.

At the same time, it doesn't
look like any of her other work,

nor like anyone else's
from that period.

The power of the first
10 paintings she makes

in 42 days,

as an artist,
they're sort of terrifying,

because they're so powerful,
they're so perfect,

and they look like
they were made yesterday,

and they don't look
like anything you've ever seen,

and how could she invent this
in one moment?

So we know now

that the universe
is 95% dark energy, dark matter.

But the strange thing is,
nobody gets excited about this.

I think our world has become
more blunted, stupid, dulled,

unless somewhere out there there's
a hilma af klint painting it all,

so in a hundred years
we'll see what we've missed.

I think this world
has forgotten how to marvel.

In 1900,
we still knew how to marvel.

Today, we sit in front of our iPhones
and media and are bored.

At the time when
hilma af klint was working,

it was becoming clear
in the sciences

that reality is not only
what we can see and touch.

But it also extends
beyond the visible.

Major discoveries were being made,
which were in the invisible realm.

And suddenly we knew that
all of space is full of waves

that we can't perceive,
but which are all powerful.

The spectrum is enormous,
starting out here with gamma rays,

x-rays, radioactive waves, and
all the way across to radio waves.

The discovery we make here is:

That we haven't seen
the world at all.

Here is the strange consequence.

If I, as an artist, want to
portray the world as it is,

I must not portray it as it looks.
Because it isn't like that!

So if I want to show the world
as it is, I must invent it.

But also something
very responsive

to what's happening in science,

so she's looking
at quantum mechanics

as much as she's looking at
natural science and at botany.

A bit like Leonardo da Vinci:

He was both an artist
and a research scientist.

And I'd say that hilma af klint
was also both,

in the field of images.

She tried to dissolve the boundaries

of what we call reality.

Do you know
what light looks like?

In the 19th century, they were sure
they knew what light was: A wave.

But then Einstein realized

you have to conceive it
as a particle, too.

Which led to his essential
point, when he said:

“If light is simultaneously
both wave and particle,

then we no longer know
what it is."

And he said that at this moment,
he felt no ground under his feet.

What I needed was courage

and it was granted to me
through the spiritual world,

which bestowed rare
and wonderful instruction.

As a young, newly trained artist,

together with her women friends,

who were fellow
graduates of the royal academy,

they engaged in
spiritualist séances.

This was quite common
in the late 19th century,

so there was nothing
remarkable about that in itself.

The edelweiss society:

There women and men
attended séances,

including
the director of the royal academy,

and also August strindberg.

Yet it was women above all
who were active in the society.

Is it possible that hilma af klint
met August strindberg there?

I'm sure they did. I think so.

But neither of them knew
how important the other would become.

Hilma af klint

admitted on June 8, 1896.
It's crossed out,

meaning that she left at some point,
like Anna cassel, too.

Then she started
a group called the five

with four other women.

And they received messages.

"Accept, accept, hilma,"
the angel says.

Then a wonderful energy flows

from the heavenly into the earthly.

There's the angel,
and the earthly being is hilma.

Here you see an utterance
from these spiritual beings:

"Hilma, you were brought here
to do this."

25,000 pages of notes,

of a relentless quest to understand

what this voyage of the mind
and the visual was actually about.

And science is also devoted

to actually observing
what is there.

So in that sense,

those two impulses
are not so far apart.

She begins by looking,

and she begins by listening.

I registered their magnitude
within me.

Above the easel,
I saw a Jupiter symbol,

which shone brightly
and persisted for several seconds.

I started the work immediately,
proceeding in such a way

that the pictures were painted
directly through me,

with great power.

In one year,

she painted 111 paintings.

That is three days per painting.

Ten panels, of paradisiacal
beauty, would be created.

They were edifying colors,

and intended gently
to impart to me all my feelings.

It was the leaders' intention
to give the world an insight

into the systematization of
four phases of human life.

Each of the "ten largest” was
to be created over four days.

They are called: "Childhood",

"youth",

"adulthood"

And "old age".

For many people it's very provocative
when someone says:

"Ll did this physically,
but it's not by me,

it came through me,

I was in contact with
energies greater than me."

Just imagine. In the early 70s,
they offered hilma af klint's work

to the moderna museet, and
the director at that time said:

"Thanks but no thanks.

She didn't make her work accessible
in her lifetime,

so she's of no interest to us."

When he heard
that she was a medium

at one stage,

there was no discussion.

He was not interested.

He didn't even look
at the pictures.

If we start saying that artists
with visions are not artists,

then there's very little
of art history left.

We have to throw out
constable and Blake

and even strindberg
and then kandinsky.

To be thorough we need to throw out
the entire Christian pre-history of art.

I really don't know
who would be left.

Exhale - inhale

whether they exist or not,

I think that hilma af klint's
achievement

lies in accepting the possibility

of higher states of consciousness.

She was one of the top students.

She was granted
a post-baccalaureate studio.

This was the center of Stockholm
in those days.

So she was on top,

and the blanch salons
were on the first floor.

And everybody
with a certain name came here.

So, hilma was exposed
to the modern ways of painting

and to all modern painters
that passed by here.

And she was here for 20 years.

Whenever I was not using the studio
at hamngatan 5 for my paintings,

it was used by lotten ronnqvist

and Alma arnell.

Both were of the opinion
that my work was improper.

We have to remember that,
in hilma af klint's day,

people thought women could
only be artists until they married.

Because the real role of a woman
is to be mother,

housewife and spouse.

The only witness she could call upon,

to assert her right to do
what she liked, was theosophy.

The theosophical movement,

according to Helena blavatsky,

broke down all boundaries.

Starting from the premise

that all religions
are basically the same,

it leads to an awareness
of the oneness

of all human beings.

The current standpoint
of the mahatmas

the Jewish standpoint
of the birth of Jesus

Buddha's standpoint
during earthly life

the standpoint of
judaism and heathendom

the mohammedan standpoint

the teaching of buddhism

the Christian religion

Theosophy was a kind of
women's liberation theology.

It gave women license
to access higher worlds,

which no other religion
had given them.

But theosophy said:
"Sure, you can be priestesses.”

Suddenly an infrastructure
existed where they could meet.

This anti-authoritarian
aspect of theosophy,

its welcoming of women,

was a huge step forward for women.

People look for ways
to dismiss things,

so one way is to say,
"oh, I don't have

to deal with this work,
it's made by a woman."

Or, "oh, I don't have
to deal with this work

because it wasn't
written about before."

"Oh, I don't have
to deal with this work

because she had
some crazy spiritual ideas.”

Well, I mean,
that's ridiculous on its face,

because, first of all,

every single intellectual
that you can find at that time

was a theosophist.

Kandinsky, malevich, mondrian
and hilma af klint,

they were all interested
in spiritual issues,

in theosophy and anthroposophy,
to differing degrees.

That was due to the time
they were living in.

"Dr. Rudolf steiner.

Now I have a purpose to do,

after taking counsel
of some of the members

of 'teosofist, '

asking you if it should be
possible for you

to go to Stockholm.

The paintings
are many and great,

and I cannot go to you.

Please do it,
if you have any time."

Rudolf steiner was
a man of great charisma.

In 1908, he was still
head of the German-language section

of the theosophical society.

She brought steiner
to look at her pictures.

She was a strong character,

but she also wanted
acceptance and guidance,

coaching, you would say today.

And I think she saw that
steiner could be that person.

I don't think
that steiner saw the same thing.

And then he told her

that her way of working
was not appropriate.

She shouldn't be painting
like a medium,

and that her contemporaries
wouldn't accept her painting

until 50 years later.

That was in 1908,
and after that,

it was a rupture for four years,

where there are no traces
of her paintings.

Well, in the same year, 1908,

Rudolf steiner also met
wassily kandinsky.

From a letter,
we know that photographs

of hilma af klint's
huge abstract paintings

were in steiner's possession,

maybe even
the hand-colored ones,

and at a time when nobody else

was painting abstract.

It's quite possible
that actually some artists

saw her work and brought
those ideas to Paris,

for example, before...
We don't know.

She lived in this environment
quite intensively

for most of her life.

For a few years after that,
she stopped working,

and only started again in 1912.
For four years, she didn't work.

It was also the time
when her mother went blind.

So suddenly she had to do
much more for her mother at home,

I think she had
this problem with her family,

I think she was not really
understood by her family.

I think she was close
to her father,

but when he died,

I think she was kind of alone.

I'm not sure about
her relation to her mother.

I'm curious about that,
but I don't know.

The family said hilma
was painting odd things

that no one should see.

So everyone was offended

at her keeping all this secret.

Having her as a dinner guest
was a bit difficult.

She never ate fish,
she never ate meat.

And actually,
I don't think she ate eggs.

So it was root vegetables or Greens -

a real vegetarian.

Choose appropriate food

Hilma was by the locals here
said to be very kind

but rather serious
and a little stiff upper lip,

so to speak.

- Oh dear.
- Oh dear.

I don't picture her like that.

Because I found this picture
in a magazine

where she actually
was dressed as a clown.

So she has a sense of humor,
she must have had.

There was someone she loved,

a doctor from the malaren islands,

called helleday.

This doctor seemed to
have been very fond of her,

but she declined marriage.
She once said,

"within me Wells forth such a power

carrying me forward,

that marriage and family
happiness are not my destiny.”

The more we discover
the wonders of nature,

the more we become aware
of ourselves.

First, I want to understand
the flowers of the earth.

I shall start
with the world's flowers.

Then, with the same care,

I shall study whatever lives
in the waters of the world.

Then comes the gate
into the blue ether

with its many species of animals.

And finally I shall enter the woods,

to study the damp mosses,
all trees

and animals living among
the cool, dark multitude of trees.

Flowers, mosses and leeches
by hilma af klint

The common spirit of humankind

Transmission of power

it's obvious that hilma af klint's
works are not intellectual maps

to be understood rationally.

You need your whole body,

to receive these works in a way

in which the intellect
only plays a small role,

and by no means everything.

Notes on letters and words,

pertaining to the works
of hilma af klint.

The essence of all
human existence lies within "wu".

One symbol that you see again
and again is the spiral.

In all cultures, when you're moving
out from a central point,

a spiral signifies development.

And if you follow a spiral inwards,
towards the center,

you can think of that
as going deeper.

And people said on adelso,

"how strange,
what can miss af klint possibly want

with all the eggs that she buys?”

I think she has such
a luminous palette, which actually,

looking at it today,
has a sort of pop art quality.

Like these large-format,
sunny orange tones...

I really can't think of
any oeuvre to compare it with.

To my mind, her color scheme
is very important.

Blue is
the most important color,

then comes yellow,

and the kind of ground,
as you see in the 10 largest,

is pink, the world is pink.

It's the color of life
and growth.

We know that blue is a color
she associates with femininity,

and yellow with masculinity.

Many players struggling
in this drama,

have been dressed
in the wrong clothing.

Many a female costume
conceals a man.

Many a male costume
conceals a woman.

A lot of hilma af klint's work
is actually about living

in a polarized world -
a world of male and female,

of day and night,
of heat and cold

and where we feel
that the world is divided

into extremes.

The development of the world
includes the wonderful dilemma

that light itself is divided
into brightness and darkness.

This problem is especially difficult
to understand for a blind world

whose organization is founded
on two forces

instead of one.

The atom is myself and the world,

for I am inseparable from the world.

The atom is here.
I am the atom together with the world.

We are both indivisible.
I and the world, both of us.

That is the atom.

It was a new way of painting,

it was a new form of art,

and she... she walked away
at the same time

as she made the way,

she has written herself,

and that's not easy,

to be a pioneer in that sense.

In solitude

It might have been a hand towel
or a bedsheet, or a pillowcase

whatever she'd sewn together.

People once had beautifully
woven textiles in their homes.

Of course, materials are expensive,
and hilma af klint

had sold very little since 1906,
when she started painting

her abstract works,
and she was living very frugally.

So this makes sense.
It's interesting that you saw that.

In the summer,
she wanted to live in the studio

she'd built for herself
on munso.

How she was able to exist
was a mystery to us.

Hilma and Anna cassel
met at the royal academy

in 1882.

As one of the siblings said,
they forged a lifelong friendship.

Later, it was said in our family,

that Anna financed hilma's painting.

She was extremely well-to-do,
and she helped in various ways.

She also saw to the building
of the studio on munso,

which was
on the giertta family's land.

It was demolished
after hilma died.

Come on, follow me.

We have the oldest one
over here.

This is my husband's
great-grandmother

and grandfather.

They befriended her,

and hilma spent a lot of time
here in this house.

Their daughter-in-law
and hilma were great friends.

Hilma and Emily were very close,

very close indeed.

They had the same, you know,
outlook on life,

and they did séances
and stuff together.

I knew she was doing abstracts

but not with that power,
oh gosh.

No wonder she needed
this big house to have them in!

It was a great view
out to the lake.

It was a very peculiar house.

It was built in the gothic style.

It was very tall
and not very big.

It consisted of a large hall,

with rods slung across

so she could hang her paintings.

There she lived during the summer

together with her elderly mother.

There was also a nurse

to help her with her mother.

There hilma was able to paint.

Every time I succeed
in finishing one of my sketches,

my understanding of humanity, animals,

plants, minerals,

of the entire creation,
becomes clearer.

I feel freed and raised up above
my limited consciousness.

And we want to fit her
into this story

that we typically tell
about artists,

but it's impossible,

because women didn't fit
that story,

and so, you know,
she would have to find

another way to live

and to live out her...
The kind of grandeur

of her creative vision.

The temple that will hold
the paintings one day

must be built of alabaster.

In other words,
it must be completely white.

At its central point will be
the astronomical tower

with an internal spiral staircase.

The place we have chosen for it
is the island of ven in the ...Resund.

She wanted it to be
surrounded by water.

She was old at that time,

and it wasn't so much
about her personal success.

It was more about

giving the paintings
to the world.

She then went up to dornach,

to Rudolf steiner,
and said, "look.

We want both to build a temple.

I have the paintings.

Let's build it together.”

She did say that.
And he refused her and said no.

"I'm building my dornach first,

then we'll see what happens
to your temple."

Herr Dr. steiner,

should the paintings
which I created

between 1906 and 1920,

some of which you once
saw for yourself,

be destroyed?

Or can one do something with them?

That sounds more like a threat,

showing how urgent
it was for her

to find a place
for her paintings.

In order to influence
the zeitgeist

or influence the art world

or influence
at different levels,

you have to have
some key people on your side.

It's really that simple.

Dear Mr. neumann,

I know how important “publicity” is,
especially in America.

Could I ask you, therefore,
to beat the drum a little?

I have never before exhibited
watercolors in New York,

which would be a reason
for a resounding drumbeat.

It's often said
that hilma af klint

never exhibited
during her lifetime,

but there are many letters
left in her estate in Sweden

which tell another story.

June 9, 1928.

Dear miss af klint,

yesterday at the hague, I heard
that you would be exhibiting.

The matter appears
to be well in hand.

So please ask again when
you are ready to send the paintings.

Heartfelt greetings,
Peggy kloppers.

Dear Mrs. kloppers,

transportation from Sweden
to London is not very quick,

and packaging everything up
also takes time.

I have today written to Mrs. merry.

To ask how many
square meters I can have,

and to emphasize
that it would be better

to put the paintings in a room
next to the exhibition hall.

But here,
the correspondence ends.

The path Peters out.

Until, in the year 2018,

when suddenly,
a postcard comes to light...

From London.

Dear Anna,

we enjoyed a glorious voyage
of four and a half days

with the most amiable captain.

He helped us with the car.

Tomorrow Mrs. merry
will be joining us,

to unpack
the paintings as planned.

Heartfelt greetings,
your friend, hilma.

So, in 1928,

hilma af klint had an exhibition

in the center of London.

Did it also include
her ten large ones?

And why has it taken 90 years
for this fact to surface?

Art history, the past 500 years,

how many women are in it?

None, basically, you know?

And then... and you say, "why?"

And they say,
"oh, because there were

no great women artists,"
but it's not true.

That's not true... that's a lie.

In male art history,
it's all about "genius."

But "genius" excluded women
because women "had no genius."

They could do
pretty still lifes of flowers,

or a nice portrait,

or a successful landscape,
but not a "work of genius."

It's still harder for women
to be in the art world.

There's no shadow of a doubt.

You take it for granted

that you have a collection

and it's mostly male artists

and you take it for granted,

and that's the way
it's supposed to be.

There are as many women artists.

Art schools, it's like still

a bigger percentage
of women at art schools,

so you have to ask yourself,
you know,

what happens between art school

and the marketplace?

This is a club system, you know?

Boy... you can call it boys' club,

you can call it
"the market club,”

you know,
you can call it anywhere.

There is this club system

that excludes so many people,

and museums are not
immune to this.

Now, with all these
all-women shows,

people are ticking a box
and saying,

"okay, tick, done.

Okay, let's go to the next.

They're done,
politically correct, done.

We have adjusted the imbalance.”

And so... and all these
all-women shows have become also

kind of fashionable,

and no,
we don't want to be fashionable.

We really want
to be part of art history.

There were always outstanding
women, but what's interesting is

they came and
were forgotten again and again.

So every generation is repeating:
"Hey, I didn't know about her!"

It's true there weren't that many,

but there were not as few
as we find in our museums,

or admit into art history.

There were far more
than are being shown today.

I think that's the scandal
we really must address.

She lived a most
industrious life.

And she agreed with her dear
kinswoman, hedvig af klint,

to move to live with her
at djursholms ...Sby,

in her very pleasant villa

next to ...Sby station.

But hilma had not been
living there long

before she fell victim
to an accident involving a tram,

as a result of which
she became ill and died.

She was 82 years old.

And she had waited

for Erik to come back from sea.

And yes, he did return to her in time.

I understand why she did that.

Because Erik was
the only one she could turn to,

the only one who was capable

of getting to grips
with all this and understanding her.

Her will left everything to Erik,

but nothing could be sold.

It's basically like a trick played

on the art establishment,

an experiment that shows
the establishment up for what it is.

Our present point of view

who wrote the history of abstract
art in the 1940s and 1950s?

The museum of modern art in New York.

Who has all
the pictures of that history?

The moma in New York.

Now suddenly
there's a counter history:

Centered around a woman,

who is not on the market, and from
whom they have not a single work.

Of course they're going to say:
"Sorry, she's not important.”

All these successful artists
who are sold internationally

as investment strategies,

work in series.

Only series can be sold
at the same time across the world,

only with series can prices
be driven higher.

So should hilma af klint
come on the market now,

she'd be a hit,
with everyone interested,

and the moma would be first in line
to exhibit her.

And part of this devious trick

is that she can't be integrated
into this market system.

Which I think shows,

in a diabolical way,

how narrow-minded
this art system is.

It's all about the question:

"How much money can we make?"

And with hilma af klint
you can't make any.

Less selfishness,
more indifference

She lived under hardship
and didn't sell anything

because she knew that
she had to keep this intact.

My mission, if it succeeds,

is of great significance
to humankind.

For I am able to describe
the path of the soul

from the beginning of
the spectacle of life to its end.

There are a lot of works,

that have never even been unrolled

or taken out of boxes
since hilma af klint's death.

We've spent many months
looking at works,

unrolling them so that
we can exhibit them.

It's thanks to the commitment
of a woman curator

that hilma af klint has now
got this exhibition.

One million people have
seen this exhibition,

which is a terrific number,
an unbelievable number.

Never in my wildest dreams

did I think
that so many people would come.

It really hit me like a bomb.

I've never seen anything
so extraordinary.

And I don't even like kandinsky.

"The woman who invented abstraction"

"Hilma leaves vassily behind”

Many who saw the exhibition

were astonished
at their own reaction to it.

For instance, I saw people
who suddenly burst into tears,

or suddenly became
completely calm and quiet.

It appears that these works
do something to us,

not only through their sheer size,
but also through a kind of energy.

If I pass away in lund
and am cremated in malmo,

the urn should be buried
in the churchyard on munsao.

Here you have the grave
of Victor,

the father of hilma,

and he lies here with his wife

and hilma.

How do you know?

There's no sign.

Uh, because my father
had her interred here.

The question remains:

Why is there no reference
to hilma af klint anywhere,

not even at the houses
and places

where she lived and worked?

The... l find it very strange,

because Sweden is...
We are such a small country,

and usually,
we are very proud of people

that are doing
something remarkable,

because we need everybody,
you know,

to get our country
on the world map.

Sweden is an incredibly
secular country now.

It used to be a very mystical one,

shrouded in myth and legend,

and the modern swedes very much
distance themselves from that.

I think it's going to take another
ten or twenty years

before Sweden truly realizes
what a treasure it possesses,

that perhaps in twenty
or thirty years, hilma af klint

will be acknowledged

as the most important
Swedish artist.

If we ask ourselves,

"how do we want
to relate the history of abstraction?”

It's no longer possible
to tell a story

that excludes hilma af klint.

Suddenly there's a woman, suddenly
we have to talk about spiritualism,

and we have to ask,
what is meant by abstraction?

We can't present hilma af klint
as an isolated figure,

because she brings with her
a whole series of questions

that will hopefully make art history
exciting again for years to come.

We have an opportunity right now

to remake the history of art
in a better way

by using hilma af klint.

It seems to me there's

a window of opportunity
right now

that everybody's unsure

because it causes them
to rethink,

and let's hope
that people are brave

and that they allow her work
to change other people's work,

and that's what art
is supposed to do.

And if they don't do that,

um, that's sad,

and they have made life
more boring, um, so...

Sometimes we need
courageous spirits,

and I would truly say that she was
a courageous, determined person.

Sometimes it takes time

for others to come closer,

to dare to cross boundaries
or to see the larger context.

Only for those prepared
to leave their familiar life behind

will life emerge in a new gown

of continually expanding
beauty and perfection.

But in order to attain such a state,

it is necessary to achieve stillness

in both thought

and feeling.

Whether thinking about electrons,
or kandinsky, or painting,

the only thing
that really interests us is:

"Who am I? How can I find myself?"

You find yourself by reflecting and
working on it, becoming self-aware.

You'll find yourself in the end.
As in my favorite quote from novalis:

"Where are we really going?
Always home."