"To astonish humanity" - Hilma af Klint

A radical force, ahead of her time – Hilma af Klint, pioneer of abstract painting
She created more than 1,000 paintings, drawings, and water-colors, revolutionizing art. A forerunner to Kandinsky and Mondrian, the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint created abstract works with deeply striking forms and colors. She was a fiercely independent and determined woman who refused to bow to the rules of the male-dominated art world. Klint knew she was ahead of her time: at the age of seventy, she decreed that her works should only be exhibited 20 years after her death. The rediscovery of her work has caused a sensation in the art world over the past years. In this deeply researched account of Klint’s life, Julia Voss recounts the unconventional life of this exceptional artist, destroying clichés and myths while painting a portrait of an era in which art, as well as politics, was set into turmoil.

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  • Publisher: S. FISCHER
  • Release: 26.02.2020
  • 600 pages
  • Format: Hardcover
Cover Download Hilma af Klint – »Die Menschheit in Erstaunen versetzen«
Hilma af Klint – »Die Menschheit in Erstaunen versetzen«
Eray Aydin

Julia Voss

Julia Voss, born in 1974, studied modern German literature, art history and philosophy in Freiburg, London and Berlin. She was managing editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung until 2017. Among other honours, she received the Sigmund Freud Prize for academic prose from the German Academy for Language and Poetry. Her books "Darwin's Pictures" (2007), "Darwin's Jim Knopf" (2010) and the biography "Hilma af Klint - 'To astonish humanity'" (2020) were published by S. FISCHER. Today, she teaches as an honorary professor at Leuphana University in Lüneburg and is a member of the board of the German Historical Museum. Julia Voss lives in Berlin.