An Atom in the Universe is the first solo exhibition of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) in a public gallery in the UK. At the Camden Arts Centre until April 16 2006, the show focuses on the painter's extraordinary series of works influenced by her involvement in spiritualism and the occult.
"When she died in 1944," said her great nephew, Gustaf af Klint, "she left over a thousand occult paintings, many sketchbooks and a large number of notebooks".
During her lifetime she made her living as a portrait and landscape painter but the 'esoteric' works, which she considered her most important, lay undiscovered until the 1980s.
A practicing medium at the age of 17, her interest in the spiritualism grew following the death of her sister in 1880. She fell under the influence of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy movement and later switched allegiance to Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy.
Both anti-materialistic in their outlook, she was inspired by a 'spirit guide' to execute 'paintings on the astral plane'.
The paintings on show shift between the figurative and geometric abstraction. Swirling arabesques and coded imagery bring to mind the work of our contemporary 'outsider' artists while the use of grids, geometry and colour recalls other 20th century artists from Kandinsky to Malevich.
Motifs re-occur: flowers, swans (reflecting her interest in nature) and triangle or pyramid shapes (representing the development of the human spirit) in intense colour combinations. Sketchbooks on display show a selection of her 'automatic' drawings, work which pre-dates that of the surrealists by nearly 20 years.
Before she died in 1944 she stipulated that her 'secret' works not be shown for at least another 20 years. An artist out of time, perhaps she foresaw that it would be for future generations to understand her unique vision.
