Forms of Life: Hilma af Klint and Mondrian Meet at Tate Modern

For decades, the story of abstract art began with men. Tate Modern's 2023 show 'Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life' helped rewrite it, placing the visionary Swedish painter alongside the Dutch master and revealing how both reached for abstraction through a deep fascination with the natural world.

Af Klint produced luminous, diagrammatic, spiritually charged canvases years before Kandinsky or Mondrian — yet she asked that they stay hidden until long after her death, convinced the world wasn't ready. The world finally caught up.

Seen side by side, the two artists turned out to share a question rather than a style: how do you paint the invisible forces — growth, energy, life — that shape everything we see?

Image: “Hilma af Klint - The Ten Largest No. 2 - Childhood - 1907” — Hilma af Klint, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.