Underrated Hilma af Klint Paintings You Should Know

Feature image: Hilma af Klint, Group IV, no 2. The Ten Largest, Youth, 2018, CFHILL/Artsy © The Hilma af Klint Foundation

Many audiences encounter Hilma af Klint through a handful of monumental paintings from the vast cycle known as The Paintings for the Temple. Created between 1906 and 1915, this ambitious project comprises nearly 200 works that explore spiritual evolution, cosmic balance, and the structure of consciousness. In exhibitions and publications, attention often centers on several iconic canvases from the series. Yet within the broader archive of Klint’s work, many paintings remain far less familiar to audiences. 

A distinctive feature of Klint’s work is her highly structured titling system. Rather than assigning descriptive titles alone, she organized her paintings into groups, subgroups, and numbered sequences. Many titles include a classification such as Group IX/UW or Group IX/SUW, followed by the symbolic motif and its number within the sequence.

Each group corresponds to a philosophical theme within The Paintings for the Temple. The Swan series explores duality and the union of opposing forces, while the Dove series examines spiritual transformation and divine unity. The numbering within each group suggests that the paintings should be understood sequentially, like chapters in a visual text that describe stages of cosmic and human development. Klint’s titles, therefore, function as guides through the symbolic architecture of her project.

Hilma af Klint’s Swan paintings form part of Group IX within The Paintings for the Temple and stand among the most philosophically charged works in the cycle. The series investigates duality, transformation, and the search for spiritual unity through carefully structured visual symbolism. 

In The Swan No. 1, Group IX/SUW, the composition is divided into four muted-color fields that meet at a central axis. Two swans intertwine across this boundary, their bodies forming a continuous looping figure resembling the infinity symbol. The birds appear simultaneously separate and unified, suggesting a philosophical meditation on the coexistence of opposing forces. The black-and-white coloration reinforces this symbolic pairing. Klint frequently used these colors to represent polarities such as masculine and feminine energies, material and spiritual realms, or darkness and illumination. Suspended between the swans is a small geometric medallion that resembles an esoteric emblem, emphasizing the painting’s connection to spiritual knowledge and hidden structures within the universe.

The Swan, No. 06, Group IX/SUW advances this exploration through a more intricate compositional system. Four swans occupy a dark field divided by intersecting vertical and horizontal lines. Each bird curves toward the center, forming a circular movement that directs attention toward the point where their beaks nearly touch. Colored arcs and geometric guides intersect across the surface, giving the image the appearance of a cosmic diagram. The birds function almost like orbiting bodies within a metaphysical system governed by invisible forces. Rather than presenting the swan as a simple natural symbol, Klint transforms it into a structural element within a larger spiritual geometry.

Around 1915, Hilma af Klint produced the Dove series within Group IX of The Paintings for the Temple. The group explores spiritual transformation through a system of geometric forms, symbolic diagrams, and religious imagery. Rather than presenting a literal dove, Klint embedded the symbol within complex visual structures involving spheres, concentric rings, crosses, hearts, and astrological references. These paintings investigate the relationship between human consciousness and a universal spiritual order.

The red ground gives this composition an emphatic devotional intensity. At the center, a heart-shaped form contains concentric bands that direct the eye inward toward the dove, which occupies the innermost register of the image. Above, a vertical axis rises through a small standing figure toward a cross-like emblem, while a spiraling linear form extends downward to two disembodied heads. The structure suggests a chain of transmission between bodily life, consciousness, and spiritual revelation. The composition is highly centralized, yet the coiling line introduces movement and psychic tension.

This version retains the heart-based structure but shifts into a darker and more introspective register. Set against a black field, the pink heart encloses a series of blue-and-white concentric forms that create greater spatial depth and a more meditative inward pull. The dove appears within this central zone, while the same vertical alignment of emblem, figure, and cross organizes the composition from above to below. The attenuated line extending toward the two heads at right introduces a more fragile, withdrawn rhythm than in the previous work. Where No. 8 feels declarative, No. 9 reads as more interior and contemplative.

The figural and anatomical language of the earlier paintings gives way here to a more distilled cosmological image. A large gray sphere dominates the yellow field, encircled by a thin horizontal ring that evokes planetary motion. Small zodiacal signs placed around the edges establish an astrological framework, while the tiny central medallion acts as a concentrated spiritual core. The composition is governed by stillness, symmetry, and scale. In place of narrative or bodily transformation, the painting proposes a universe ordered through balance and celestial structure.

A related compositional logic appears here, though the shift in palette alters the painting’s effect considerably. The golden sphere, set against pale blue, feels lighter and more luminous than the gray orb of No. 12. Its thin vertical ring introduces an upright axial motion rather than the lateral equilibrium of the previous work. Zodiac signs remain at the perimeter, framing the sphere within a larger symbolic system. The result is less planetary in appearance than diagrammatic, as though Klint were reducing cosmic structure to its most essential geometric terms

This painting pushes the sequence furthest toward abstraction. A vast white circular field fills the composition, bordered by rainbow bands that produce the effect of an aura or emanation. Set against a black ground, the form acquires exceptional clarity and stillness. The small multicolored disc at the center echoes the chromatic ring at the perimeter, creating a correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. Zodiac signs again mark the corners, but here they operate less as decorative symbols than as coordinates within an ordered cosmic field. The painting reads as a purified vision of spiritual totality.

Among the most complex symbolic works within The Paintings for the Temple are the paintings known as The Tree of Knowledge. These works transform a familiar biblical motif into a sophisticated diagram of spiritual development. Instead of illustrating a literal tree, Klint constructed a visual system that traces the relationship between nature, consciousness, and cosmic order.

The earlier work, The Tree of Knowledge (1913), presents a vertical structure that resembles both a tree and an anatomical diagram. Branching forms extend outward from a central axis while small colored shapes appear like seeds or cells distributed across the composition. The upper section of the painting contains delicate networks that evoke foliage, yet the overall structure suggests something closer to a biological system or a cosmic map. Klint connected these ideas to the concept of spiritual evolution. Growth unfolds through layers, just as branches expand from the trunk of a tree.

Two years later, Klint returned to the same idea in The Tree of Knowledge, No. 5 (1915). This painting introduces a clearer geometric order. The upper half is divided into segmented zones of contrasting black, white, and pale green tones. These segments resemble slices of a circular diagram or sections of a celestial chart. Beneath this structure, a large spherical form anchors the composition, intersected by curved lines that resemble petals, organs, or planetary orbits. The painting’s symmetry suggests a system in which every element participates in a larger pattern.

Created shortly after the completion of The Paintings for the Temple, Hilma af Klint’s Cosmic Egg (1917) continues her investigation into the origins of existence through one of the most enduring symbols of creation. Across many mythological traditions, the cosmic egg represents the birth of the universe and the emergence of life from a primordial source. Klint adapts this symbol into a visual meditation on the formation of consciousness within the cosmos. The large egg form dominates the composition and is divided into subtle color zones that suggest stages of development. Within these fields, organic shapes resembling seeds, cells, or embryonic forms appear suspended, linking the painting’s spiritual themes to visual references drawn from biology and natural growth.

The painting also reflects the broader intellectual climate of the early twentieth century, when artists and thinkers became increasingly fascinated with invisible forces such as electricity, magnetism, and energy fields. Klint interpreted these ideas through her own symbolic language. In Cosmic Egg, the universe emerges as a living system governed by cycles of transformation and expansion. The layered structure of the egg suggests a process of unfolding in which matter, life, and consciousness evolve within a unified cosmic order.

Continued study of Klint’s archive continues to reshape our understanding of how abstraction first emerged. As more paintings enter exhibitions and scholarship, new connections will emerge between abstraction, mysticism, and scientific curiosity in the early twentieth century. The works explored here reveal a visionary artist who approached painting as a language capable of describing the unseen architecture of existence.

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