Hilma af Klint was creating abstract paintings as early as 1906 - years before Kandinsky, Mondrian, or Malevich. She believed her work was guided by spiritual forces and left instructions that it should not be shown for at least 20 years after her death, convinced the world wasn’t ready to receive it.
Kandinsky, Klee, and others explored mysticism, yes. But they could write about it. They could show it, name it, intellectualise it, publish it. Their spirituality was allowed to exist in public, abstracted into theory or form. It was permissible.
Hilma af Klint, as a woman - working in a patriarchal culture still shadowed by the history of witch trials and spiritual suspicion - did not have that safety. Her communion with spiritual forces wasn’t theoretical. It was lived. Risked. Held privately, and protected.
So the difference isn’t belief. It’s exposure. It’s cost.
Her work was devotional - channelled, encoded, offered. And maybe that’s what makes it feel so alive now.
There’s a quiet resonance between af Klint’s spiritual commitment and the work of New Blood Masters artist Tia Taylor Berry. Her use of colour pencil and sacred geometry feels clear and deliberate - meditative, symbolic, intentional. Grounded in a felt sense of mysticism and meaning.
Tia’s work sits alongside other artists exploring abstraction, geometry, and communion. Each artist holds a different visual language, but all invite a kind of attention that goes deeper than surface. Together, they open a space that is both still and alive.