Project
Botanical illustrationsfor HILMA AF KLINT BOTANICAL SKETCHBOOK, FLOWERS, MOSSES AND LICHENS 1919-1920
In 2020, 100 years after the original notebook was completed by Hilma after Clint, I created 37 botanical illustrations in response to a Hilma af Klint notebook that contained only abstract plant diagrams for the exhibition of her botanical notebook and Tree of Life paintings at the the Lightforms Art Center in Hudson, NY in 2020.
While her original studies typically paired observation with symbolic interpretation, this project reconstructs the missing observational layer—reintroducing botanical specificity as the perceptual ground from which her diagrams may have emerged.
Lecture on Esoteric Botany of Hilma af Klint by David Adams Ph.D. at the Lightforms Art Center
You can purchase some prints of my 37 original watercolor and ink illustrations here
Contact me for the available Originals - yevgenia at gmail.com
“Her [Hilma af Klint’s] most extensive project from the late “anthroposophical” period were extended botanical studies during 1919-1920, annotated in German and recording the characters and qualities of individual plants, all of which employed a combination of clairvoyance, meditative observation, and artistic expression – titled Flowers, Mosses, and Lichens. She recorded these in German in three notebooks, her copy of one of which is exhibited here. She developed an unusual threefold diagrammatic language to capture the qualities of each plant, with each species given either a full or half page: its scientific name, a drawing of “directional lines” (often a square divided into 4 quadrants, sometimes with expressive colors), and a description of its emotional or spiritual qualities (sometimes seemingly pointing to therapeutic properties). Later in one nodtebook it was written: “The images are seen on the astral plane.”