The Ten Largest, No. 2
The Ten Largest Painting Series
Hilma af Klint was a Swedish abstract artist who was way ahead of her time. She might just be the first abstract painter in Western modern art history but did not get recognition until just recently. Lately, there have been several exhibitions of her work; for example, at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Malmö, Sweden. Hilma af Klint’s The Ten Largest is iconic and has lately been shown all over the world, most notably at Tate Modern in London and a couple of years ago at Guggenheim Museum in New York. It is one of her most important works, and the large scale of the paintings is quite striking.
Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) started as a landscape and portrait painter after graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1887. During her career, she also had an interest in the spiritual world—an interest she later employed in her art. According to the artist, she received messages from the spirits telling her what and how to paint.
The Ten Largest is a group of works comprising ten 10,76 x 7,87 ft (328 x 240 cm) egg tempera paintings. The paintings depict the spiritual evolution of humans, taking us from childhood, through youth, and adulthood to old age. Let’s take a closer look at the history and the meaning of The Ten Largest!
History of the Paintings
Hilma af Klint took precise notes on her work with The Ten Largest, and therefore we know a lot of the meaning and how to understand the paintings through her notebooks. The Ten Largest is part of a larger series of artwork called Paintings for the Temple, a series she was assigned from the spiritual world. We know, from Hilma af Klint’s notes, that there were more spirits involved in the assignment, whom she called “The High Masters.” She saw herself as a channel between the spiritual world and this world.
Af Klint painted The Ten Largest during a 40-day period in 1907, and the spirits were very specific with the timeline. They told her to paint each painting in four days, following each other, which she completed with help from at least two friends. She created the paintings swiftly and spontaneously, with little planning. She completed the whole series in 40 days.
The Meaning
The paintings depict the evolution of human consciousness and the spiritual evolution of the human mind. Each painting should be interpreted as a phase in life. Hilma af Klint was very interested in spiritualism, which was not uncommon in the early 20th century, especially in the cultural circles. The paintings were supposed to give humanity images of life beyond everything, which were not visible otherwise. However, when Hilma af Klint searched for a suitable place to exhibit and show the world these beautiful abstract paintings, she did so in vain. In 1932 she decided that since the world was not ready to take part in and understand the spiritual messages in her paintings, most of her artwork and her notebooks were to be kept from the public for 20 years.
Childhood
Ten Largest No.1
The two first paintings in the series represent childhood. These two works have a blue background. They also depict Hilma af Klint’s fascination with duality. She described in her notebooks two principles in the spiritual world. These principals were not to be understood as opposites but as something forming a whole together. In these paintings describing childhood, we see a lot of individual shapes forming pairs. According to the artist herself, the lily and the color blue represented the feminine principle, and the rose and the color yellow symbolized the masculine principle. We can see a lot of organic forms and shapes in all of The Ten Largest. Furthermore, in the paintings representing childhood, we see a lot of forms associated with plants and vegetation.
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