Hilma Af Klint continues to inspire us to this day

Born in 1862 the Swedish painter and feminist pioneer Hilma af Klint has become one of Scandinavia’s most influential artists. Her strong visual language, innovative style, and deep appreciation of nature has made her Vogue Scandinavia’s muse, with her works serving as the inspiration for our unique typography and visual identity.

Hilma af Klint, known to many as one of the few boundary breaking female artists of her time, actually lived her entire life in relative obscurity. It was four decades after her death that she made her international debut in a 1986 exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art aptly named The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985.

Though her work was subsequently presented in several solo and group shows, not to mention eagerly written about in her native Sweden, it would take 27 more years before Hilma’s work was exhibited with any significant relevance. Finally, in 2013, at the Modern Museum of Art in Stockholm, Hilma af Klint got her due.

The retrospective, featuring 230 works, set off a chain reaction which cascaded through the art world as it travelled from museum to museum. Hilma’s oeuvre was met with increasing interest and amazement as her artistry resonated a century later with people all over the globe.

So, too, are we enamored with Hilma. For this magazine, the artist has become a central figure. Her work, her love of, and dedication to nature, her fiercely independent spirit, along with her singular aesthetic, has lent itself to Vogue Scandinavia’s ethos, as well as its visual identity. In developing the magazine’s bespoke typography, Hilma’s imagery, metaphorical language and catalogue of symbols and signs have been the foundation for typographer Jannik Sandboth and art director Sergio Garcia. Her influence can also be found on the custom casing of the Collector’s Edition of the magazine.

Though Hilma was underappreciated in her era, it wasn’t as if her life wasn’t extraordinary. In 1882, at just 20 years old, Hilma was one of the first women to gain acceptance to the prestigious Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm, from which she graduated with honours. Early on in her development, Hilma displayed an unwavering interest in spirituality, even participating in seances as a teenager. This was not particular to Hilma — joining exclusive societies and groups focusing on esotericism and spirituality was a popular pastime among artists of that era.

Young Hilma counted herself a member of both the Theosophical Society and the Anthroposophical Society. She even had a brief stint at the secretive and religious Edelweiss Society. Eventually Hilma, together with four other female artists, founded a small group of their own, The Friday Group, also known as The Five.

The women meditated, prayed, studied and initiated seances featuring drawing and communicating with incorporeal beings known to them as ‘The High Ones.’ It was during this intensely spiritual era that Hilma’s seminal work, The Paintings for the Temple, was produced. Hilma worked primarily ‘mediumistically’; she described the experience as “her hand being led by her spiritual guide.” These paintings are said to be created when Hilma was in an “inspirational state of mind,” not clearly awake, perhaps in a trance-like state.

These works set the tone for her entire artistic practice. The vast volume of paintings (nearly 200) predate her European contemporaries by many years. Although notable artists active during this time — Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian — were also inspired by the occultist Theosophy, Hilma’s non-figurative compositions were produced years ahead of theirs, without knowledge of their existence. These Modernists worked alongside each other during the Modernist movement in Europe. Meanwhile, Hilma’s accomplishments are all the more breathtaking as she worked completely unaware of this movement.

Convinced that reality was not limited to the physical world, Hilma believed that there existed an inner dimension, a realm as alive and thriving as that of our material, actual world. She developed myriad signs and symbols, letters all stemming from these beliefs – a unique visual language to better convey her spiritual convictions.

Massively influenced by nature, Hilma would spend long stretches of time in the archipelago of lake Mälaren throughout her life, which inspired her fundamental studies of flowers, mosses and lichens – a body of work she later donated to the scientific library in Dornach, Switzerland.

It has been posited that Hilma believed that her contemporaries weren’t ready for her work, a notion that was strengthened when she met Rudolf Steiner for the first time in 1908. Steiner, the father and auteur of the Anthroposophical movement, was unable to interpret Hilma’s paintings, professing that he doubted anyone would be able to do so for 50 years to come.

There is truth to this; interest in Hilma lay dormant for many years, however it is in full bloom today. A new generation of art and culture lovers have been awestruck by her work. Even Swedish design titan Acne Studios was enthused by the artist — the brand produced a small capsule collection dedicated to the artist in 2014. Documentaries have since been made and a major biopic of Hilma, written and directed by Lasse Hallström, is in production.

Our own tribute to Hilma, our magazine’s signature font, was no easy task. Developing an original, stand-alone font is very ambitious, according to Garcia, who spearheaded the project. “I have worked with typography before, it is a beautiful method to convey an identity of a project and hopefully tell an additional layer of story through this visual language,” he says. “It’s really about embodying what Vogue Scandinavia stands for: female empowerment and pioneering of women’s rights but also wanting to highlight the importance of other Scandinavian attributes: the closeness to nature; the flora and fauna.

As Garcia’s research continued under the guidance of editor-in-chief Martina Bonnier, it became evident that Hilma and her artistic practice was the natural choice for muse of Vogue Scandinavia. Hilma embodies all of these attributes – her mentality, deep appreciation of nature, and spirituality embodied everything the magazine aims to express visually, but also philosophically.

“She even studied the teachings of Carl von Linné,” says Garcia. “She really stood for all the values Vogue Scandinavia represents. We wanted to merge these two worlds together, Hilma’s and Vogues, and found typography to be the perfect channel to do so.”

The process of designing a font is an investigation, Sandboth explains. “Normally a typeface or typography project always starts with researching other typefaces. However, with this project we took a different approach. It was so refreshing,” he says. “We wanted to break down the work by Hilma and break down the style; translate her visual language into a typeface language. It was very challenging, but so inspiring.”

Not wanting to create a font based on her handwriting, symbols and letter work, the designers instead decided to forage deeper, bringing in more aesthetics, shapes and themes that were influenced by her artwork.

There wasn’t one particular image that persuaded Sandboth, but rather a series of Hilma’s automatic drawing work. “It was really interesting to research the shapes she produced, which Hilma said she made under a spiritual influence, or as she apparently put it ‘being guided spiritually.’ All the spiral forms she developed out of this approach fascinate me.”

Almost serendipitously, as the new Hilma af Klint inspired typography was coming together, the taxing process of editing and publishing all 11 of Hilma af Klint’s catalogue raisonne books was underway. The project is arduously shepherded by former Moderna Museet (Stockholm) Director Daniel Birnbaum, who curated the famed retrospective of the artist’s work. Birnbaum hopes that these books will act as a resource for people interested in and researching Hilma’s work. Being an ardent follower of Hilma’s artistic practice the curator isn’t surprised by how the international community has embraced the artist, and how Hilma has become a source of great inspiration to Scandinavian Vogue.

“It is incredible that the power of Hilma af Klint’s work, her imagery and vast language of symbols she created lives on,” says Birnbaum. “That she continues to impact artists, designers and creatives to this day is a testament to her legacy and the importance of her work as an artist.”

The fashion editorial seen here has been inspired by the work, the life and the vision of Hilma af Klint.