Publication Details Hard cover, 280 x 214 mm (portrait), 256 pp, illustrated in full colour with over 200 images of her paintings, watercolours and notebooks as well as historical photographs. ISBN: 9781741741520
Author and/or Editor name/s Edited by Sue Cramer with Nicholas Chambers. Essays by Sue Cramer, Nicholas Chambers, Jennifer Higgie, Aaron Lister and Julia Voss
Author and/or Editor bio/s Sue Cramer is an independent curator and writer. Most recently, she was curator at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, where her exhibitions and publications included ‘Cubism and Australian art’ (co-curated with Lesley Harding, 2009) and ‘Less is more: minimal and post-minimal art in Australia’ (2012). Cramer has also worked at the ACCA, Melbourne; IMA, Brisbane (director); MCA, Sydney; and as the art critic for The Age. She has contributed articles to international and Australian journals.
Nicholas Chambers is senior curator modern and contemporary international art at the Art Gallery of NSW. His exhibitions and associated publications include ‘Adman: Warhol before pop’ (2018) and ‘Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection’ (2016). Chambers has previously worked as Milton Fine Curator of Art at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh as well as an adjunct professor at the Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh.
Year of Publication 2021
Publisher Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Abstract ‘Hilma af Klint: The secret paintings’ was published in association with a major survey of the remarkable work of this visionary Swedish-born artist (1862–1944) drawn from the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Sweden. Af Klint is now widely regarded as one of the world’s pioneers of 20th-century abstract art.
Hidden from view for decades, the startling re-discovery of af Klint’s work has captured the imagination of contemporary audiences, with a 2019 exhibition of af Klint’s work at the Guggenheim taking New York by storm.
No one had created paintings like hers before – so monumental in scale, with such radiant colour combinations, enigmatic symbols and otherworldly shapes. In an era of limited creative freedom for women, af Klint’s secret paintings became an outlet for her prodigious intelligence, spiritual quest and ground-breaking artistic vision.
The book includes over 125 artworks ranging from af Klint’s monumental canvases to small watercolours (many of which have not been shown or published before); pages from her beautifully detailed notebooks; as well as a selection of photographs and other images.
Five essays and an illustrated chronology – written by curators, her biographer and other specialists – reveal new scholarship on af Klint, her practice and her place in art history.
You must be logged in to post a comment.