“Flowers, Mosses and Lichens,” conceived 1919–20; artist’s copy completed by 1926. Notebook with watercolor, metallic paint, pencil and ink. Credit… via Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm. [New York Times caption and illustration]
Walker Mimms’s treatment of Hilma af Klint is elegant, lyrical, explicit.
Alongside the careful realism of her herbal specimens, af Klint inscribed diagrams explaining their spiritual lives. For the European thimbleweed, a hot-and-cold Star of David; for the goat willow, a broken hexagram; for the black poplar, a yin-yang bullseye representing its “resistance to unite the astral and the mental.” Credit… Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and gift of Jack Shear, via Museum of Modern Art, New York. [New York Times caption and illustration]
Ebullient, rigorous and boastfully esoteric, these “Nature Studies,” as she called them, reveal the didactic side of a pioneer in nonliteral art. This is an economical show of some beautiful field exercises, and it suggests the spiritual extremes to which the honorable but often tedious tradition of botanical illustration might be taken.
“Birch” from the series “On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees,” 1922, watercolor on paper. Credit… The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm. [New York Times caption and illustration]
At MoMA, a wall of bright and hasty energy paintings from 1922 wraps the show — wet-on-wet watercolors with only vague kinships to their herbal titles: “Oak,” “Pansy,” “Birch.” After her years transcribing tendrils and anthers, they are sloppy and fun, like cannonball dives into the placid surface of a lake. They are also less interesting. But they are edgy in their way…
(Walker Mimms, “In Her Botanical Paintings Hilma af Klint Hurtles Back to Earth,” 5-15-25)
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Aren’t they beautiful!
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I agree, Sue! Cheers.
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In the end she chose essences. (K)
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Well observed. Best regards.
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I saw the relatively recent exhibition at the Guggenheim. Not seen this one yet. She’s certainly interesting.
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Thank you for having a look, Josie. I agree she’s fascinating on many levels, not least for her art. Best regards.
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I always feel the need to consider spiritualism with a large does of salt .
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