EMPIRE LINES

Tate Modern curator Nabila Abdel Nabi plants European abstract art in transnational networks of spirituality and theosophy, through Hilma af Klint’s 1908 series or cycle, The Evolution, Paintings for the Temple.

Abstract artists Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian never met. But in their respective environments of Sweden and the Netherlands, both invented new languages of visual art as rooted in nature at the turn of the 20th century. Departing from traditional landscapes – with a touch of Vincent Van Gogh – they embarked on radical and ethereal painting series, connecting humans as a part of. not separate to, ecology.

Nabila Abdel Nabi, a curator of Tate Modern’s new exhibition, Forms of Life, explores how showing these artists in conversation defies their typical depiction as solitary artists who worked alone. We see Klint and Mondrian as active participants in global communities, with works that speak to scientific debates around Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the spiritual and philosophical movement, theosophy. Rethinking ‘control’ and ‘rationality’ – as stereotypes of abstract art, and concepts used to exclude women artists from history – Abdel Nabi underlines af Klint and Mondrian’s intuitive practices, and how both used abstraction not to defy nature, but to think through it.

Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life runs at the Tate Modern in London until 3 September 2023.

For more on theosophy, hear Jessica Albrecht’s EMPIRE LINES on the 'White Buddhist' Statue of Theosophist Henry Steel Olcott, Colombo (c. 1970s): https://pod.link/1533637675/episode/2cf022e2ac70910d0741747e59f2f6f2

For more on Surrealism Beyond Borders at Tate Modern, listen to Carine Harmand, Keith Shiri, and Richard Gray on EMPIRE LINES: https://pod.link/1533637675/episode/bc78f4df16a50055611d88aa812c7bfb

WITH: Nabila Abdel Nabi, Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, and a curator of Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life.

ART: ‘The Evolution, Paintings for the Temple, Hilma af Klint (1908)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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