Tuesday May 26 * 8pm * REGISTER
Hilma af Klint -- 20th-Century Visionary, 21st-Century Artist
Presentation by Bernard Welt
One of the most exciting discoveries in international art in this century is a painter who was born in 1862 and completed her most significant body of work by 1915.
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), trained in painting from life at the Swedish Royal Academy of Art, rapidly innovated her own fully developed system of abstraction, independently of the European modernists—Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich—who have been credited with “inventing abstract art.” Like them, but earlier, she abandoned the traditional aim of art to faithfully reproduce reality as it appears to the senses, in favour of a mission to communicate a “higher” reality, perceived not by the eye but by the spirit. Charting the progress of human life with biomorphic forms, geometric shapes, signs and symbols, and above all, a stunningly vivid palette, Af Klint’s “Paintings for the Temple,” recently displayed in a blockbuster exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, have now claimed their place as one of the most remarkable bodies of work in 20th-century art, and Hilma af Klint has been anointed a pioneering genius of modernism.
This presentation will provide discussion of Hilma af Klint’s own writings on inspiration, imagination, and visionary art, profusely illustrated with images from af Klint’s captivating artwork
Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint, the 2019 documentary directed by Halina Dyrschka for Zeitgeist Films, is available for streaming at AFI Silver https://kinonow.com/hilma-af-klint-afi-silver-theatre
Bernard Welt, Professor Emeritus at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University (Washington DC), is the author of Mythomania: Fables, Fantasies, and Sheer Lies in American Popular Art and a contributor to several arts journals and catalogues. His particular area of interest is counter-realism in modern art: aesthetics of imagination, vision, and dreams. He is a widely published poet and has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Writing and a Lambda Literary Award nomination.
A Co-Production of Rhizome DC and Home School at Revolve: http://www.revolveavl.org/home-school
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Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Welt all proceeds will be split by Rhizome DC and Revolve AVL. Please donate if you are able. (It is not necessary to donate in order to participate - just enter $0 when asked for contribution amount.)