1862
Hilma af Klint is born on October 26

1864
A section for female students opens at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm

1879
Af Klint begins participating in séances

1882-87
Attends the Royal Academy of Fine Arts

1890
Af Klint has her first experience acting as a spiritual medium

1896
Af Klint starts an independent circle with four female friends, they call themselves “The Five”. In their séances they make contact with spiritual guides, or High Masters, “The Five” begin to document their experiences in notebooks and make automatic drawings

1905
Receives a promise from the spiritual guides that they will prepare her to present a message. After asking about the nature of this task, af Klint is informed that her assignment will be performed through painting

1906
One of the High Masters, Amaliel, offers af Klint the task of creating paintings that would convey the spiritual world. Af Klint accepts. After months of preparation, she starts working on The Paintings for the Temple

1908-1912
Her mother goes blind. To care for her, af Klint takes a four-year break from her work on the commission. She also largely stops creating the figurative works that she showed publicly

1915
Concludes The Paintings for the Temple, comprising 193 works

1916-20
Continues creating pictures that are connected to her religious beliefs but no longer produces them mediumistically

1920
Her mother dies. She joins the Anthroposophical Society and visits its headquarters, the Goetheanum, in Switzerland

1922
The Goetheanum burns down; af Klint offers Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy, some of her paintings for the new Goetheanum, but he declines the proposal

1931
Makes plans for a temple to house her work, a four-storey tiered conical structure with a tower at its center; intended to be located in an island in Sweden, the building is never realized

1932
Writes in her notebooks that her work should be not shown for twenty years after her death. She undertakes a year’s long process of making sure her works will be accessible to future generations, reorganizing and editing her notes and those of The Five and documenting her paintings and works on paper

1944
On October 9, Hilma af Klint writes her final notebook entry, ending with the following sentence: “You have a mystery service ahead, and will soon enough realize what is expected of you”
Hilma af Klint dies on October 21, following a tram accident, days before her eighty second birthday

 

Hilma af Klint at the Royal Academy of Arts, Stockholm, 1885.
Courtesy of Hilma af Klint Foundation
©The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Bilbao 2024