A01=Julia Voss
abstract art
abstraction
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Author_Julia Voss
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B06=Anne Posten
biography
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=ACX
Category=AFC
Category=AGA
Category=BGF
Category=DNBF
clairvoyant
convention
COP=United States
cosmopolitan
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
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exhibition
experimentation
female artist
gender fluidity
guggenheim museum
kandinsky
Language_English
malevich
meditation
modernity
mondrian
mystic
mysticism
nonfiction
nonrepresentational mode
PA=Available
philosophy
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
radical
religion
science
softlaunch
spiritualism
spirituality
stockholm
sweden
theosophy
women
Product details
- ISBN 9780226689760
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 19 Oct 2022
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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A highly anticipated biography of the enigmatic and popular Swedish painter.
The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was 44 years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained. While her naturalistic landscapes and botanicals were shown during her lifetime, her body of radical, abstract works never received the same attention. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint produced the earliest abstract paintings by a trained European artist. But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a successful woman artist, but she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic. Like many of the artists at the turn of the twentieth century who developed some version of abstract painting, af Klint studied Theosophy, which holds that science, art, and religion are all reflections of an underlying life-form that can be harnessed through meditation, study, and experimentation. Well before Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction, af Klint was working in a non-representational mode, producing a powerful visual language that continues to speak to audiences today. The exhibition of her work in 2018 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City attracted more than 600,000 visitors, making it the most-attended show in the history of the museum/institution.
Despite her enormous popularity, there has not yet been a biography of af Klint-until now. Inspired by her first encounter with the artist's work in 2008, Julia Voss set out to learn Swedish and research af Klint's life-not only who the artist was but what drove and inspired her. The result is a fascinating biography of an artist who is as great as she is enigmatic.
Julia Voss is a German journalist and an art critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Anne Posten is a literary translator based in Berlin.
