A Hilma af Klint Watercolor for the Getty
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| Hilma af Klint, A Sunlit Grove of Birch and Pine Trees, about 1903. Getty Museum, gift of the Disegno Group |
The Getty Museum has acquired a rare landscape drawing by Hilma af Klint, the Swedish artist and mystic whose abstract paintings predated those of Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian. Titled A Sunlit Grove of Birch and Pine Trees, it comes from a period in af Klint's career (about 1903) when she was known as a painter of oil landscapes and portraits. A Sunlit Grove is executed in watercolor and gouache on paper, 11-7/8 by 9-1/8 in.
The Getty becomes only the third U.S. museum to own a work by af Klint, following recent acquisitions by Glenstone and the Museum of Modern Art. Virtually all of the artist's work is owned by the Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm.
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| "Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future" at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2018 |
Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) came to public attention with LACMA's 1987 exhibition "The Spiritual in Art" and a 2018 monographic show at the Guggenheim New York. Those exhibitions featured big, bracing abstractions made from 1906 to 1920. Af Klint combined art school-honed skills with séance-inspired automatic writing.
The artist bequeathed most of her life work to a nephew with the stipulation that it not be shown for 20 years after her death. The nephew complied and then offered the art to the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, which turned it down. He instead established a foundation to hold the art.
In 2021 David Zwirner sold The Tree of Knowledge, a set of af Klint watercolors that had been in a private collection, to the Glenstone Museum, Maryland. A partnership between Zwirner and the af Klint Foundation was proposed, presumably involving placing some works in museums. But Foundation head (and artist's great-grandnephew) Erik af Klint maintains that af Klint's work should be accessible only to "spiritual seekers"—a descriptor that he does not apply to the average museum visitor. Erik has proposed to stop loans and even publication of Hilma's art. "This is not meant to be public," he said. "The exhibitions, the books, the pictures, the carpets, the socks—none of that is allowed."
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| Amazon is selling this Hilma af Klint-inspired area rug |
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| Hilma af Klint, Peach-Leaved Bellflower and Cowslip Primrose from Nature Studies, 1919–1920. Museum of Modern Art, New York |
The Foundation's board has outvoted Erik on loans. The Foundation lent heavily to MoMA's "Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers," a recent show debuting the museum's acquisition of a portfolio of watercolor Nature Studies.
It's unclear how many af Klint works are held outside the Foundation. The Glenstone watercolors are of particular interest as spiritual abstractions. In comparison the botanical subjects of the MoMA and Getty sheets show lesser-known phases of the artist's career.
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| Piet Mondrian, Landscape Near Arnhem, 1903. Getty Museum |
A Sunlit Grove fits in with several drawings in the Getty collection by artists who would go on to pioneer abstraction. These include a Frantisek Kupka pastel Girl Shading Her Eyes and a Mondrian watercolor Landscape Near Arnhem. Along with the af Klint, the Mondrian demonstrates how the Northern landscape was a point of departure for abstraction.
Both watercolors are currently on view at the Getty Center, gallery W104. So is another recent acquisition, a floral abstraction by the Czech-Austrian artist and stage designer Emil Pirchan. Associated with the Vienna Secession, Pirchan used watercolor and marbling techniques to create flower-like pictures to decorate his home in Brno. The Getty sheet is dated 1906–1907, close to the time that af Klint began painting large abstractions.
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| Emil Pirchan, Composition in Mauve, Green, Orange, and Yellow, about 1906–1907. Getty Museum |
Comments
> Disegno Group
If this is the same company, they're based in Australia. If so, I wonder how they've been associated with the Getty? Or why they chose it for the donation. Maybe they do or have done graphics/publishing work for them? It's a nice gift, even more so since tax write-offs still require a net expenditure.
Disegno Group Pty. Ltd. was founded in 1996. The company's line of business includes providing commercial art or graphic design services for advertising agencies, publishers, and other business and industrial users.
ADDRESS 129 Queensbridge St Southbank, 3006 Australia [End quote]
An article from years ago quoted an observer of philanthropists as saying such types generally prefer giving strength to strength. In terms of 1965-1986-era LACMA, its physical layout was admittedly more flimsy than strong. So that didn't exactly help give confidence to people like Jerry Perenchio. I hope the barren-concrete format favored by Peter Zumthor (and Michael Govan's love of contemporary) won't be off-putting in another way.
If it weren't for the Getty (and with LACMA sort of MIA) and with segments of the visual arts kind of shaky (ie, older, non-contemporary) in today's LA, the status quo would be way too rudderless.