If you read this blog regularly, you know we’ve been following the re-discovery and burgeoning appreciation for the seminal Abstract painter Hilma af Klint. So you can imagine how excited we are to find out that a biopic titled Hilma has been released, written and directed by Lasse Hallström and starring his wife, Lena Olin, and their daughter Tora Hallström as the older and younger versions of the artist. Here’s an excerpt from Roger Ebert’s coverage of the film:
‘Af Klint came of age in an era of great interest in communication with the spirit realm, and the loss of her sister propelled her into sessions with a medium. She connects the medium’s channeling of the spirit world through automatic writing with the vibrant abstract images of spirals and circles she creates, insisting that it is not her imagination that produces these paintings but what she sees. She thinks of herself as a scientist, with art as “a tool in my research” and “a map of everything.” She studies the work of a prominent Austrian philosopher and spiritualist named Rudolf Steiner (Tom Wlaschiha), also an influence on Kandinsky and abstract geometric artist Peit Mondrian. Af Klint refers to Steiner as her soulmate and invites him to see her paintings. He is encouraging on their first visit but later dismisses the work as not rooted in her soul. ‘
Read the whole review:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hilma-movie-review-2023.
