The volume also delves into her unrealized plans for a spiral-shaped temple in which to display her art―a wish that finds a fortuitous answer in the Guggenheim Museum's rotunda, the site of the exhibition. af Klint's] striking artwork expresses a vision of non-figurative art that was ahead of her time and establishes her as a pioneer of abstract art. Under the direction of experienced mediums, then directly, she received missives from higher planes at a staggering rate, delivered by a menagerie of go-betweens: Ananda, Amaliel, Georg. Celebrated Swedish Artist Hilma af Klint's hardback book of paintings is a riot of colour and expression.

Her biography of Hilma af Klint was on the shortlist of the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2020 and became a bestseller. It is a go-to place for museum lovers whether they want to read up on an exhibition they are about to visit; read more about an exhibition being held far afield or revisit an old favourite show.

The volume also delves into her unrealized plans for a spiral-shaped temple in which to display her art. For nearly one hundred years her paintings were forgotten, but when they were rediscovered they changed the history of art. Mixing psychology, Christianity and Buddhism, historical fantasy and science fiction, “new age” ideals were amazingly popular, particularly among educated women, who used those ideologies to carve themselves new social niches outside the suffocating strictures of church and family.

Childhood" (1907) is reproduced from the Guggenheim Museum's landmark exhibition catalog, Paintings for the Future, a staff pick for Women's History Month.

Af Klint travelled with these sketchbooks so as to be able to show her friends her work in a more accessible format.

The woman who emerges in Voss's exacting portrait is strong-willed, purposeful, and confident—ahead of her time and perhaps ours too.Between 1906 and 1915, purportedly guided by a higher power, af Klint created 193 individual works that, in both scale and scope of imagery, are like no other art created at that time. For example, Theosophy, among the most popular, sought to reconcile the spirit with the natural and scientific worlds, and many artists embraced it: Kandinsky, Mondrian, Kupka, and Arthur Dove all studied Theosophy; none of them, however, ever publicly suggested their canvases were the expressions of any consciousness other than their own.

This extraordinary collection is edited by and copublished with Christine Burgin, and features an introduction by Iris Müller-Westermann. Af Klint set about composing for posterity an alluring eye-music that echoed back the complex psyche of her age. Now, for the first time, af Klint’s works, some 1,600 in all, have been collected in a Catalogue Raisonné.

A roundtable discussion among contemporary artists, scholars and curators considers af Klint's sources and relevance to art in the 21st century.