BACKGROUND

When Hilma af Klint's hidden paintings were taken out of the wooden crates in an attic in Stockholm, they were remarkably undamaged by time. When they were shown publicly, 42 years after her death, Hilma af Klint was recognized by the art world as the first modernist. When the paintings for the temple made their way around the world and landed in New York at the Guggenheim Museum, they broke the all-time attendance record - 660 000 visitors. People have been touched and moved by her art in a way that rarely happens.

Hilma af Klint is now perhaps the most internationally renowned of all Swedish artists. Her paintings have fascinated millions of people, not least because of the mystery that surrounds them, secrets that Hilma believed were hidden in the motifs. Although she herself often groped darkly for interpretations, she made it clear early on that only the future can provide answers to the riddles and the message she believed she had been given to pass on to humanity. She wrote about symbols and letters in her paintings in 1907:

"The purpose of the alphabetic language is to form a common teaching for all peoples, both Christian and non-Christian. This method is numismatic, i.e. related to numbers". A little later she writes: "The secrets of the solar system shall be revealed". And further:

"If we stick together, it will be our privilege to give the world a new truth. I am sent to prophesy it." (1913).

Hilma's and her contemporaries' interest in spiritualism, theosophy and anthroposophy has been highlighted, but what is less well known is that behind all this, and as a foundation for her entire life and artistic work, there was a deeply Christian basis. Åke Fant, author and art historian, considered the foremost connoisseur of Hilma af Klint's artwork writes:

"Throughout Hilma af Klint's work, from the earliest surviving media notes to the very last lines of her notebooks from 1944, it can be seen that she was intensely concerned with the central themes of Christianity. Humility is paramount. Like her friends, she is constantly on her knees before the central situations in the life of Christ. All their activities would be unthinkable without the experience of the Church year and its events. The Easter Vigil and Pentecost are stations where Hilma af Klint often stops, even outside the fixed chronology of the church year.

"Probably it is the rock-solid Christian faith that allows Hilma af Klint to go through one phase after another in her development without faltering".

Åke Fant even believes that Hilma can be historically inserted into a Christian movement that wanted to convey special messages to the world through rapture and ecstasy. He specifically mentions Hildegard of Bingen and St. Bridget, in whom he finds historical parallels to Hilma af Klint's life and work. Hilma's vision was not to challenge Christian faith, but to contribute something new and prophetic in her own time.

For 2000 years, Jewish and Christian traditions have also adopted an approach to understanding the Bible that involves trying to ponder and read it not only literally, but also symbolically and allegorically. In this tradition, depth and coherence are created beyond the 'letter' in the belief in the God who, like the poet, also speaks between the lines. Especially in the Jewish tradition, the mysticism of numbers also emerges as a means of approaching the deeper layers of the Bible. It is obvious that Hilma seeks out these different paths. It becomes clear, not least in the paintings of man and woman, of Adam and Eve. Here, too, Hilma's colors take on special significance: yellow for the male, will and power of thought, blue for the female, love and emotional life. Red for love and white for truth. For Hilma, self-knowledge becomes the path of man; to find his dual, his complementary half, through faith and struggle, in order to reach the goal; to become one with Christ and to be able to return with him to Eden, the lost paradise. The chronology of the Bible, its dates and symbolism, become important to Hilma in the story from Adam to Christ.

It should also be pointed out that the gallery's interpretations of the paintings for the temple take less account of Hilma's instructions from the spirit world, but more account of the basic Christian outlook she shared with her surroundings and contemporaries. The compilation is made in such a way that paintings from different series here together create a common Christian faith basis.