Oddlet: Hilma af Klint · 1 min read
Jul 24, 2026
The Paintings the Spirits Told Her to Hide
What if the first abstract paintings in Western art were commissioned by a spirit named Amaliel for a temple that didn't exist?
Hilma af Klint graduated with honours from Stockholm's Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1887 and made a respectable living painting landscapes and portraits. In 1896 she co-founded a weekly seance circle called The Five. They opened with prayer, took minutes, and transcribed messages from six spirits named Amaliel, Ananda, Clemens, Esther, Georg and Gregor. When the spirits gave instructions, Hilma followed them.
In November 1906 a spirit named Amaliel commissioned a cycle of paintings for a temple that did not exist. She said yes on the spot. Over the next nine years she produced 193 large abstract canvases, four years before Kandinsky made his first abstract watercolour. Ten of them stood over ten feet tall. The spirits specified four days per painting, so she painted ten of them in roughly forty days. She also drew up the temple. It was a four-storey spiral. It was never built.
Then, by her own account, she concluded the world was not ready.
So she sealed the first abstract paintings in Western art history into crates, marked them with a hand-drawn cross-and-x, and left instructions in her will that they were not to be opened for twenty years after her death.
The spirits, as it turned out, had undersold it by twenty-two.
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- Wikipedia - Hilma af Klint — Comprehensive biographical overview: birth/death dates and places, family background, education at Royal Academy 1882-1887, formation of The Five, Temple cycle, Ten Largest dimensions, 1908 meeting with Steiner, four-year hiatus, 1200+ paintings inheritance, 20-year sealing stipulation.
- Hilma af Klint Foundation - Official Biography — Primary-source-aligned timeline: confirms Karlberg Palace birth, Djursholm tram accident death, The Five members and 1896-1908 active period, Amaliel commission November 1906, 193 paintings completed 1915, 1932 marking of Blue Books with X.
- Britannica - Hilma af Klint — Encyclopedic biography confirming 1882 Royal Academy admission, 1906 Amaliel commission, 193-work Temple cycle 1906-1915, predates Kandinsky/Malevich/Mondrian, 1932 sealing instructions.
- Guggenheim Museum - Press Release — Confirms 12 October 2018 - 23 April 2019 dates, 170+ works exhibited, 600,000+ visitors, most-visited exhibition in the museum's 60-year history.
- Guggenheim Bilbao - The Ten Largest — Documents the Ten Largest series as ten paintings on the four stages of life, each over three meters tall, tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 1907.
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