A deepening power struggle within the Hilma af Klint Foundation has erupted over the future of the artist’s legacy, with its chair calling for her paintings to be sequestered in a private temple accessible only to spiritual seekers. His stance, which opposes recent exhibitions and commercial partnerships, has been met with resistance from the foundation’s trustees, sparking new legal filings and a broader debate over how the visionary Swedish artist’s work should be preserved and presented to the public.
The artist’s great-grandnephew Erik af Klint, chair of the foundation, claimed this stance is “not about what I want, it’s about what the statutes of the foundation dictate,” in comments to the Swedish press on Monday.
The foundation was established in 1972 by Hilma’s nephew, also named Erik af Klint, to whom she bequeathed the entirety of her work. He sought to preserve and manage this trove of more than 1,300 paintings after it was rejected by the Sweden’s foremost modern art museum, the Moderna Museet, and to honor his aunt’s original intentions for the work.
Indeed, the foundation’s fourth statute states that the board of directors must “keep the work available to those who seek spiritual knowledge or who can contribute to fulfilling the mission that Hilma af Klint’s spiritual principals intended.”
The younger Erik af Klint, who has helmed the foundation for two years, plans to follow this instruction to the letter. This would mean the end of any future exhibitions of the work, with access heavily restricted to “spiritual seekers.”
His proposal highlights a deepening divide between the foundation and the wider art world about how Hilma af Klint’s legacy should be preserved and interpreted. In recent years, she has been held up as the West’s first major abstract painter, a groundbreaking reassessment that has led to a string of high-profile exhibitions at museums like the Guggenheim in New York and Bilbao, Tate Modern in London, and soon the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), due to open in May.
Installation view of “Hilma Af Klint and Piet Mondrian” at Tate Modern 2023. Photo: Jai Monaghan, courtesy of Tate.
In addition to claiming that his great-great aunt’s work should be kept from future exhibitions, Erik alleges that no previous institutional promotion of Hilma’s paintings, let alone attempts to commodify them, should have taken place. ”When a religion ends up in a museum, it is dead,” he told Dagens Nyheter. “This is not meant to be public. The exhibitions, the books, the pictures, the carpets, the socks—none of that is allowed.”
Indeed, in her lifetime, af Klint saw herself as a mystic rather than a pioneering modern artist. She claimed that her colorful, flat, geometric planes had been guided by a higher power that instructed her to paint “on the astral plane.”
In recent years, the foundation has been rocked by infighting over what its responsibility to her spiritual beliefs entails. The disagreement results in part from the board’s makeup. The foundation’s statutes dictate that it must be chaired by a member of the af Klint family while its trustees are selected from the Anthroposophical Society, who may have very different ideas or motivations. (Hilma had been heavily influenced by the Austrian architect and esotericist Rudolf Steiner, founder of the spiritual new religious movement Anthroposophy.)
Varg Gyllander, the board’s spokesperson, responded on behalf of the other trustees. ”The claim that only a select few people may view the art is a gross misinterpretation of the statutes, the will of the founder and Hilma’s intentions,” he told Dagens Nyheter.
”It would be an unimaginable loss. It would lead to major protests across the art world,” said German art critic Julia Voss, biographer of Hilma. “How would one even reasonably determine who is a ‘spiritual seeker’ or not?” She speculated that the position was not backed by other members of the af Klint family. “After all, their members have themselves, for many years, been committed to Hilma af Klint’s art being exhibited.”
Neither the foundation’s CEO, Jessica Höglund, or Erik af Klint responded to requests for further comment.
Currently, Erik is unable to advance his vision for Hilma’s legacy because no members of the foundation’s board support him. In 2023, he filed a lawsuit accusing its four trustees and the foundation’s CEO of seeking to profit from various improperly authorized deals that would see both NFTs and an immersive experience created from af Klint’s work. They have denied the allegations.
Simmering tensions spiraled into a public dispute last year over a proposed partnership with the mega-gallery David Zwirner, a deal backed by the trustees that Erik vetoed before it could be formalized. He told the Guardian that he fears the board is failing to safeguard Klint’s work, instead hoping to “sell it off.”
Hilma af Klint, Group IV, No. 2. The Ten Largest, Childhood (1907). Courtesy of Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk. Photo: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.
“As a family, we do not believe that the work is meant to be commercialized, which has happened these last few years, and what we’re trying to do is bring it back to order,” he said.
The legal dispute is ongoing. Last month, Erik filed a new petition with the Stockholm District Court in an attempt to force the board’s other members to resign. He told Dagens Nyheter that if his “final battle” in court fails, he will resign, to be replaced by another member of the af Klint family.
The model for how to promote the work of a historically overlooked artist is now well-established within the art world. It usually involves the expertise of a commercial gallery, both to establish a market as well as to cultivate an institutional presence. Meanwhile, the Hilma af Klint Foundation’s statutes outlaw the sale of one series of 193 works known as the “Paintings for the Temple,” but say other works can be sold to cover the costs of preserving the remaining holdings.
Erik characterized the potential agreement as a “hostile takeover.” He was backed by his uncle Johan, the foundation’s former chair, who described it as “a plundering of the foundation” and “extraordinary and absurd.”
Zwirner refuted the claims late last year. “The idea that we are about to ‘plunder’ the foundation is completely absurd. We’re a seasoned estate-managing gallery,” he countered, speaking to the Guardian. “They would like to shut everything down and do nothing,” he added, describing this approach as “sabotage.”
A spokesperson for the gallery said by email in December that the potential partnership with the Hilma af Klint Foundation would be “conducted with great care and respect for the foundation’s statutes.”
The partnership is currently stalled but, if it goes ahead, the gallery’s spokesperson said it would result in new research and publications “to further explore and celebrate af Klint’s groundbreaking contributions to modern art.” The first of these is the English translation of Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky: Dreams of the Future, to be published by David Zwirner Books this fall.
